Close Encounters 30
by chezchuckles
Summary: Never Send Flowers. Spy Castle and Beckett attempt to exfiltrate a former CIA asset.
1. Chapter 1

**Close Encounters 30: Never Send Flowers**

* * *

for the best research ass. I could ask for-  
even if you are a feral wolf about spies

* * *

previously on **Spy Castle 29**...

 _Castle was going down to his knees, crashing hard into the pavement._

 _"No." Kate's voice. Burning heat._

 _Oh, fuck. He'd been shot anyway._

* * *

Before the groan slipped past her husband's lips, Agent Beckett was on her feet and running. Castle, crashing to his knees, a mere form in the darkness, began to list to one side, his hands clutching at his ribs.

"Castle, Castle-" She skidded to a stop and grabbed his shoulder, reaching for the wound.

"Okay, I'm okay," he choked out. Face bloodless, but still upright. Barely. "You're - exposed. Get them-"

She turned hard, shielding him and aiming her weapon down the alley. She hadn't drawn fire, so she sprinted towards the SUV, skirt plastered to her hips and flaring behind her, but her arms steady. She shot twice at the vehicle - lit by the green of the traffic signal - but the dead man at shotgun was being pushed out of the passenger-side door by the driver. He stopped to fire indiscriminately back at her, but she didn't let up, unloading the rounds as she approached.

More than halfway down the alley, her aim found its mark, and the driver was catapulted back against the steering wheel. His foot must have foot must have slipped off the brake because the SUV lurched, the driver's hand blooming with blood, and she paused only long enough to draw a more precise bead on the man.

She shot him three times, center mass, and he slumped sideways over the dead man that he'd been trying to push out of the SUV.

Nothing moved in the vehicle - but the SUV itself was steadily rolling forward.

She ran towards it and checked the back seats - empty - as she approached. She caught the dead shotgun passenger by the back of his shirt, pulled him half out of the seat to crawl in over him. The driver wasn't breathing, his weapon had fallen between the seats, and his eyes were fixed, so she grabbed for the keys and yanked them out of the ignition.

The engine died, the car came to a stop at the curb. She ripped open the fuse panel just below the main console, scanned the tags, and pulled the fuses for the GPS system. The screen went black.

Now she had transport, and no one could report their location.

Beckett jumped back out again, ran back down the alley to her husband.

Castle had slumped back to sit sit on his feet, his chest heaving, lips pressed together. She couldn't see his face as he huddled over the wound, but when she got to him, his head lifted.

"I'm okay," he croaked.

"Like hell."

"Pavement ricochet," he said, pushing her away. His hands were soaked in blood, but she remembered that he always bled a lot - it always looked richer and brighter because of how his body healed. "Get Lo."

She didn't want to. She hesitated.

"Beckett-"

Damn, he was right. Not only did the woman deserve the CIA's help for her decade plus of service, but Beckett's own strong moral center wouldn't let her leave Salome out here to die.

Kate gripped the back of Castle's neck and shoved a rough kiss to his thinned lips. "Stay," she breathed, and then hustled past him in the darkness to look for Salome.

* * *

Castle could hear her just at his back, her soft calling of Salome's name, searching for the wounded asset in the pitch black of the alley. He took a whistling breath and glanced down at his side.

Burned like fucking fire, but he didn't _think_ it was a bullet. Hard to know. He had expected his regimen-enhanced body to plug the hole any moment now, but so far he was still bleeding. So maybe more than just a ricochet.

Damn. Beckett was going to kill him if he was wrong.

Might be shot. Maybe. But he couldn't just sit here on his knees, staring down at the wound like a stunned green agent, like he was no smarter than Ito in that damn grocery store.

Castle slowly peeled his hands back, and the wound gushed brightly in the darkness. It was strange how it actually glistened in the dull wash of traffic signals from the street. Still bleeding, still thick, just below the curve of his last rib, high enough that he didn't expect any internal damage, low enough to miss his lungs.

He began to ease out of his shirt, trying anyway, but it was no good. He resorted to simply pulling the material away from the wound, threads snagging in the messy edges of his skin.

Shit.

He had never been one for pain. Black had always said his thresholds were too low, had tried to toughen him up as a kid. Being on the regimen, most wounds had barely fazed him even with the pain because they had healed so quickly. Even grabbing that knife blade and wrenching it away from Beckett's neck - even that hadn't registered in the heat of the moment. But lately, whatever it was they'd done to his pills, however they'd fucked it up, he felt it in a way that always shocked him.

Damn, he had to get off his fucking ass and help his partner.

Castle ripped the shirt, the sound of tearing cotton echoing in the alley. His shirt hanging from his shoulders, he shrugged it off, gritting his teeth against the pain. It was a fucking flesh wound, and he was going to be fine if he could dress it properly and get on his feet.

"I found her," he heard from behind him. "Shit. Shit. Castle, I'm gonna need your help to get her out of here."

Salome wasn't good.

He heaved himself to his knees, swayed a moment, then planted a bloodied palm to the pavement and pushed off. He got his feet under him and lurched upward, stumbling as he tried to keep his balance. He yanked at the shirt, got one end in his mouth, and tore a long strip from the remnants. As he shuffled forward, searching for Kate, he pressed the majority of his shirt against his side, hissing sharply as pain cramped him.

He had to wait a second, shoulder to the adobe wall, before he could wrap the long strip around his torso and tie off the makeshift bandage. He tightened the knot until it burned, until it made his lungs flame, and then he jerked forward.

"Becks," he called. They needed to get out of here before-

Sirens chirped in the distance and then came on strong, two or three police cars, he estimated.

"Castle," she hissed from the darkness.

He measured his pace, counting steps under his breath just to concentrate on something other than the blood thickening at the bandage. When he got to the second dumpster, he softly called her name again.

"Here," she whispered. "I need help with her. Leg - her knee, I think. She's out cold."

Castle grunted but came forward, hunching over to finally find them. Salome had collapsed against the brick wall behind the dumpster, her lower half smeared with blood, her face white even in the darkness. It was so black in the alley that it was difficult to see his wife, but she touched his side, checking his bandage.

"Damn," she whispered.

"It'll work," he said tightly, drawing her hand away and squeezing her fingers. It burned all up his side, and he had a feeling the debris was still in there, exacerbating things. "Let me get a shoulder under her armpit and hoist her up."

"Into the SUV," Beckett said tersely.

"She conscious when you found her?"

"Yes."

Nothing else. He wondered what had happened between them, what Kate had said, if she'd said anything at all.

It was clear that Salome had gotten on the wrong side of someone. But how much of this was her own doing and how much was her connection with the CIA was hard to tell. And that mattered to him - it mattered. He wasn't risking their lives for a woman who was running some kind of long-con.

But if she was in trouble because she'd been passing them actionable intel for fifteen years, then that was another story.

Had to save her damn life to find out though.

Castle reached in and gripped Salome around the upper ribs, hauled them both upright using the dumpster for leverage. Kate was immediately at Salome's side, standing right with him, taking some of the woman's weight.

They began to make torturous progress down the alley, both of them breathing hard with the woman between them. He could feel Kate's arm where it tucked around Salome's waist, feel Kate's breast at his fingers where she was wedged against Salome to keep her upright.

Lo's head was bowed steeply forward, truly unconscious with blood loss or pain. The SUV loomed ahead of them, impossibly far.

"Becks?" he called.

"Castle."

"Between getting shot at and finding out you've been keeping secrets about your health-"

She dragged in a harsh breath, but he kept going.

"-I'm going to go ahed and call it. Sexiest night ever."

She laughed, a strangled noise in her throat, and he could see her turn to look at him. "But I was going for romantic."

"Same difference with you, love."

* * *

Dragging your husband's ex out of danger even as she was losing blood despite the tourniquet, while your husband was listing so badly it was almost more like dragging them both was _not_ her idea of romance.

But if Castle's sappy looks her way were any indication, he kinda thought so. Or he was losing more blood than his super body could replace.

And that scared the shit out of her.

They worked to get Salome in the back of the SUV, a process of millimeters, wedging her unconscious body into the floorboards, Beckett crawling over her and inside, hauling on her shoulders while Castle lifted the woman's hips, trying to avoid jostling the wounded knee.

Losing a lot of blood, both of them, and Beckett was terrified she wasn't up to full speed, wasn't up to _this_. Two wounded and the local cops on their way.

When Lo was moderately inside, Beckett darted between the driver's and passenger's seats and crawled over the dead man. She popped open one of the doors and shoved until the driver was hanging more out than in, and then she had to kick at his ribs until he fell to the pavement. She glanced back to check on her husband, found him hanging over the frame of the passenger door, head bowed.

Her heart kicked. "Castle," she said sharply.

He roused and gripped the door frame, used it to haul himself inside. The SUV rocked with his ungraceful weight, and she pulled the keys out of her pocket and jammed them in the ignition.

His hand came hard to her knee. "Losing - blood, Kate."

"Hang in there, okay? A shot at the house."

"You - brought that?" he mumbled. His face was white, lips bloodless.

"Are you kidding me? A full kit, every fucking mission." Her indignation melted when she looked at him, the startled animal behind his eyes. "It's like the regimen's version of an epi pen, baby. I've got it everywhere."

"Damn," he sighed. His eyelids were drooping. "Love you."

"I know, baby. But you can't close your eyes just yet. Stay with me, navigate for me; I knocked out the GPS and we have police coming up fast."

She put the SUV into gear and ran the red light.

* * *

Castle wasn't entirely conscious for the drive. He was pretty sure there was a chunk he missed, but he had at least managed to hang on through the car chase, which was the best part, before he'd passed out again.

She was a magnificent driver; she really was. All natural. She'd come to him already perfect; he hadn't needed to do a thing.

"Yeah, honey, you've lost a lot of blood," she said at his ear.

He sucked in a sharp breath, buffeted by the sting of pain. She was peeling back his makeshift bandage. A soak of water from the fountain, peeling it back some more. "Ow," he said dumbly.

"Don't be a baby. Flesh wound," she said. But her lips were pinched. She was kneeling in front of him; he was in the courtyard, sitting down on the marble basin of the fountain. Her fingers were cool and lovely. "I need to clean this, get rid of the debris. There's a lot of grit in the wound."

"Bullet," he mumbled.

"You said it wasn't a bullet," she hissed.

"I might have exaggerated the truth," he sighed.

He wasn't sure then what happened, but it hurt and the pain knocked him silly. Debriding the wound? Or just her hands as she pushed the skin back together and butterfly-taped it. "We'll stick you in the whirlpool," she murmured. "Clean it out. After."

After. After? Oh, the shot. He would really love to float in the whirlpool for a while. But turn off the heat, turn the heat on low. Heat was bad. His body got too hot for him to be in a heated whirlpool.

She was dragging him out of the courtyard. He figured he must have made it that far before he'd had to sit down. "I need your help for just a little while longer," she said. "And then the shot."

"I can do it," he got out, shifting to put weight on his feet. He wasn't that badly wounded; it was just the blood loss. He needed that damn blood; it had to stay inside his body to work.

"Salome's in the car. I dressed her wound before I got to you; bleeding has stopped. I think she took it broadside, so it's torn muscle just above her knee."

He grunted acceptance. "We'll carry her out."

She was touching his neck. "Your skin is hot, so that's a good sign."

"Yeah," he grumbled. He was feeling it too, burning up. He wanted her to press her cool fingers everywhere.

She chuckled. He might have said that out loud. "Alright, sweetheart, just keep it up for a few more minutes, and then the regimen. You can sit in the whirlpool until you start to feel sleepy."

He'd be out for four hours when that happened. She was holding off on the shot until she didn't need him dragging his ex out of danger. Smart girl. Whirlpool would be nice. He would drag _her_ in it with him. "What do you need?"

"Carry her hips. We need to get her into bed. But not the way that sounds."

He laughed, surprised by the snarl in her voice - and the humor. He laid his hand on her shoulder and let her take some of his weight, followed her through the door and into the attached garage. The SUV's engine was still ticking, and he figured this had all happened in moments. That she had darted out of the car, grabbed the first aid kit, and come running back to deal with the wounded.

He must have tried to follow her, must have gotten light-headed through the court yard and stopped at the fountain.

Though he didn't remember it.

"Okay, this way, Castle - grab her around the hips and thighs. Careful of her knee."

He obliged, watching Kate for his cues, backing up slowly to pull Salome out of the car.

"Damn," she huffed, clambering down to the running board with her arms under Lo's shoulders. "I hope I'm not this heavy when you've had to carry me. We're the same size."

"You are?" he blurted out, dragging a look down Salome's body. "Her hips are bigger. And her ass."

"Good thing you're a leg man," Beckett said.

Was she being arch? He looked up at her; she wasn't laughing. "I'm a you man."

She rolled her eyes. "Pick up your feet, Castle. You're going to trip on the edge of the tile."

He did trip; it always astonished him when his feet didn't obey his brain in time. Blood loss. He was feeling it. "I like your ass a lot better," he said.

"Well, fuck," she muttered. "You really are romantic." A huff of her breath. But they were both huffing. Unconscious woman, no matter how Beckett thin, was also Beckett _long_ , and unconscious was always fucking heavy.

Castle tried to pick up his feet, angled them through the courtyard and towards the door to the main area of the house. "What bed?" he said stupidly.

"I need her close," Kate growled. "Fuck it all. She'll have to be close enough that I can - get to you both. I can't be sure she won't bleed all night."

"What... what bed?" he repeated. Downstairs master or the upstairs guest? Oh, fuck. _Fuck_. "You're putting her in our bed?"

Beckett's eyes blazed. "Just pick up your feet and move, Castle."

Oh, fuck. This was not going to be fun.


	2. Chapter 2

**Close Encounters 30**

* * *

Salome's wound had opened up again and was bleeding, staining the comforter pulled over the bed. Castle had hustled - a wounded hustle - into the bathroom for towels and sheets, clean linens, and Kate had the first aid kit slung over her shoulder.

She pulled it off, her arms aching from Salome's dead weight, and cracked the lid, digging for the clotting and sulfa powder. Castle came back into the bedroom with sheets, and she spared him a glance, her heart rate doubling when she saw the slack cast of his face.

"Sit down," she told him sharply.

"You need help."

"No." She ripped apart the packaging. "I need you conscious until I can get this under control."

He did as he'd been told, sinking into the dainty upholstered chair in the corner by the bathroom door, the stick legs creaking. "It won't hold me."

"It might not," she agreed, offering him a shared smile. He wouldn't die; she had to keep that in mind. He wasn't actively dying, but Salome might very well be.

All of Beckett's noble intentions when they'd started this mission - save the asset, rescue the damsel in distress, whatever it had been - they were grit in her mouth. She wished she had never forced Castle to come here.

She had to use the scissors to cut off Salome's jeans, ripping them away from her leg. Tatters clung to the woman's leg, and she ripped off the bigger pieces, but she couldn't waste time on it. She grabbed a fresh tourniquet from the kit and wrapped it around the top of Lo's thigh, high enough up that Beckett saw a flash of the woman's polka-dot thong.

It made her hands tremble, made her remember that this was a person, not just an ex of Castle's, not just Asset Lo, but a woman who had chosen her underwear this morning.

"Beck-"

"It's okay," she said quickly, glancing over her shoulder to Castle.

"Your skirt's drenched." He flicked his fingers at her, listing heavily into his wounded side. "I really loved that skirt."

She glanced down, grimly noted that the thing was ruined, soaked in blood and grime. She lifted her gaze back to her husband, saw his eyes closing. "Castle," she snapped.

He flared into consciousness, jerking upright at the tone of her voice and then groaning, favoring his side. "You need - me?"

"Need you _awake_ ," she said. If he fell asleep before the shot, she didn't know what happened. "Awake. You hear me?"

"Message received."

She shifted around the bed even as she tightened the tourniquet, moved until she could keep an eye on Castle. He gave her the all-clear field sign, which seemed out of place here; she usually saw him giving that signal to their son.

She swallowed hard and peeled back the tape on the bandage she'd doctored in the garage, carefully lifted the edge. The blood had ceased welling up because of the tourniquet, but it was fresh, though it seemed like it was attempting to clot. Kate grabbed tweezers and small forceps, and she worked at debriding the wound, pulling threads from her clothes and shrapnel from the wall out of the woman's thigh.

Thankfully, no bones broken, nothing exposed. No arterial blood either, it was the dark of veins, which meant it could be saved without surgery - which Kate couldn't do. She tore open the package of QuikClot, took a steadying breath, and then salted the gaping wound.

Salome woke with a scream, jerking like the undead as the powder burned through her nervous system. Her eyes were wide and feral and she caught the back of Beckett's neck with a fierce grip, her rage and pain making her strong.

Kate stumbled, but Castle had surged forward at the first scream, and he broke Salome's hold, caught Beckett before she could fall on top of the woman. He was breathing hard and ragged in her ear, and his arm was tight.

"You know the QuikClot's been taken out of Army field kits," he said gruffly. "Causes tissue damage."

"I don't have any impregnated gauze," she huffed. "Are you really criticizing my field dressing-"

"No, no. Just - wouldn't have gotten that reaction if we could pack the wound with clotting gauze."

She gave him a look for that, gestured to the chair. "Sit, you big bully. I've got this."

Salome was, of course, unconscious again, passed out from the pain and the exertion that had bruised Kate's spine, and so Castle went back to his chair. She quickly dressed the wound in fresh gauze, packing what she could, tightening the skin together where the gauze would only impede the process. She wrapped Salome's leg and splinted it for good measure. Couldn't hurt to have the woman thinking she was a little more debilitated.

When Kate had sloshed antibacterial suds over her hands and washed them clean, she turned finally for her husband.

He had propped his elbow on the arm of the chair to keep from falling over. His heroic rescue of her from Salome's clutches had apparently taken it out of him, because his eyes were drooping, and his body was loose and rangy.

She moved quickly to the bedroom safe and punched in the code to open the vault. The briefcase with its diamonds were inside, and so was the black bag she had brought. Kate yanked open the main compartment, pulled out the protected insulated case with its waiting regimen. She went back to Castle and sank to her knees before him, withdrew the injection needle and its already primed payload.

"Baby, arm or thigh?" she murmured.

His elbow dropped from the chair's arm and he startled, apparently awake now. "Thigh is fine," he mumbled.

"I need you _awake_ in that whirlpool," she told him quietly. "So shot now or wait till we get there?"

"Now," he rasped, clearing his throat. His eyes burned a little clearer when he looked at her. "I think now is a good idea."

She wouldn't let that panic her; she wouldn't. She rose to her knees and tapped his hip with her free hand. "Can you pull your pants off, or you need help?"

"I... could use some help."

She nodded tightly and put the injector back into the case, willed her hands to stop trembling so damn badly. This was routine, this was their life, she had done this before, all of it.

She had just not expected to be so physically drained by the strain and stress of the night, to be wearied by the travel and the nonstop action. She hadn't expected that when it had most mattered, she might not have backed her partner like she should have.

She might have gotten him shot.

Castle couldn't quite manage the button or zipper - his hands were fumbling and awkward under hers - and she had to do the fine motor work herself. But once that was done, he could lift his hips and shove at his pants, get them down to his knees at least.

She laid her palm over his bare thigh, leaned in and kissed the spot. His hand came heavy to the back of her head, and she let out a breath, lifted up against his touch.

"I'm fine," he told her. "Gonna be fine."

She nodded and moved back, took the alcohol pad out of its package, swiped his leg. The injection was easy, a quick depressor push and the serum was delivered. Castle shivered as she withdrew the needle, but she capped the injector and put it back in the case, pulled out the pill for him.

"Do you need water?"

Castle shook his head and tossed the pill back, swallowed it dry. "I'm good."

"You are," she murmured, rising to her feet and palming his thighs. She leaned in over him and kissed him under his eye, soft and delicate because her heart felt the same. "Stay here until I can help you. Whirlpool. Promise me."

"Promise," he mumbled. His hand came up and caught her skirt, tugged at the blood-soaked fabric. "Change, Kate. Want you with me."

"I will. Let me check on Lo, be sure the bleeding has stopped before I join you. I'm just going to clean up."

He met her eyes, something like reassurance in them, and she leaned in and kissed him again, fiercer than before, because he was already on his way to a four-hour recovery-unconsciousness, and those always made her anxious.

But she turned away from him and moved back to the bed to check on Salome.

* * *

Her lips twitched as Castle walked ahead of her, bare-ass naked, to the edge of the pool. When she'd turned around from cleaning up the bed and washing down Salome, he had been naked, waiting on her with that distance in his eyes. She had changed quickly, but she had washed herself down with precision, not wanting to get Salome's blood in the water.

She caught up to him as he swayed on the mosaic tile around the whirlpool, and he cast a longing look back at the beautiful blue pool. "In the tub," she said softly, swatting his ass.

He grunted and stepped forward, but he looked apprehensive.

"I turned the temp way down," she told him.

He let out a little breath. "Good. I - yeah. Overheat."

"I know," she reminded him. She had stripped down to underwear, thinking it was a good idea that she be at least partially clothed for this, considering his state. "Sit on the top step, and I'll sit on the edge. You can hook your arms over my knees to help keep you upright."

He gave her a grateful flash of his face, a little sheepish - as if he'd been worried she hadn't thought it through. She had. She knew what to do for him. They had to clean the wound of foreign objects because his super blood would spend all his energy attacking and attempting to expel grit, gravel, or dirt. The bullet - she wanted to believe he was right, that it was a graze - but the bullet might work itself out if he had enough energy for that. Which meant they had to clean that wound.

"Sit, baby," she murmured, gripping his bicep to help.

He sank down one foot at a time, moving heavily, and when he had his balance, she let go and sat down away from the churning jets. When she put her feet in, the water was like a cooled off bath, but she still watched him critically as he sat before her.

"Keep your shoulders and head out of the water," she warned him. "Your heart."

"Yeah," he said, his voice like gravel. She knew he was already fighting the pull of the regimen, how it shut him down to concentrate on healing. He leaned back against the wall, but he could only manage to lift the arm on his uninjured side to hook it around her thigh.

His head came to rest heavily on her knee. She trailed her foot through the water, glad she had doused herself in antibacterial before coming out here. He didn't need it, his blood kept fungi and bacteria - even viruses - from ever getting a hold in his body, but she felt better knowing she had done all she could. She wanted the serum working to heal him, not protect him from her carelessness.

His lips opened against her skin, his body slumping. She coasted her fingers through his hair and tilted his head back. "Don't sleep. Not yet. Just a few more minutes, love."

"Mm, here. I'm here." His lashes brushed the skin of her inside thigh. "Keep doing that."

She smiled to herself, combed the flop of bangs back off his forehead, dragging her nails lightly against his scalp. He had a knot here at the back, some old injury that not even he remembered, and she worried her fingers around it before trailing down to the nape of his neck.

His breathing grew even, deep. Deeper than her own, with that pause between inhale and exhale that was so different than the pause between exhale and inhale - the difference between his blood receiving a higher exchange rate of oxygen and a depressed, non-functional system laboring to breathe. Healthy pause. That was good.

She skimmed her fingers up his jaw and around his ear, rubbed her thumb at his eyebrow where he remembered, very vaguely, one time hitting his head backstage at his mother's show. Before everything, before his father took him.

She leaned in over him and kissed that scar very softly, pushed her hand down his chest and hugged him from behind. He grunted her name and struggled against sleep, lifted a wet hand and soaked her with his embrace.

When their ten minutes were up, she withdrew from his arm but kept his head in the crook of her elbow, tugging on him a little to get him moving. "You with me?"

"Yeah," he sighed.

"Come on then. Into bed. Sleep it off."

"Yeah. You coming?"

"Kinda cramped, sweetheart," she murmured, steering him towards the interior door.

He stepped inside and made a lurching turn towards the bedroom. "Don't want her. Want you." Pitiful voice, a whine with those puppy dog eyes her direction. James's eyes.

"I know. I'll be right there with you," she reminded him.

He sighed and shuffled towards the bed, collapsed more than sat down. She had a grip on his arm, but if he wanted to fall, he was going to fall - she couldn't stop him. She pushed gently on his shoulders and bent over to lift his feet.

He groaned and twisted away from his side, so she helped him roll over, which put his back to Salome. She was just fine with that.

"Crawl in with me," he pleaded, catching her by the wrist. Played with her fingers. "Crawl-"

"Okay," she gave in. "I will, I am." She crawled over his thighs to curl in behind him, touching her fingers lightly at broad sweep of his ribs down to the gash on his side. It was open to the air; he had ripped off the bandage when he'd pulled off his clothes. She hated this part, how dicey it seemed, but she knew the bandage would only make it harder for the regimen to work.

And Castle would sleep so hard he wouldn't move.

Now _she_ had Salome at her back. Better that way.

* * *

It was actually easier to cradle the laptop across her knees and sit against the headboard between them, right there in case anything happened. She had the timer going on the burner phone, and they had only approached forty-three minutes.

She had a long wait ahead of her.

She filed her field notes and submitted them to the secure site, indicating they had possession of the target but that the handoff hadn't been completed, and then she shut down the laptop, being sure she had disengaged the network.

Castle was out cold. Seriously out. She leaned over him to place the laptop on the bedside table, reminding herself to put it in the vault with the diamonds later tonight. Just in case. She was sure Salome wasn't faking a gunshot wound, but she didn't know how capable the woman was and Kate was not going to underestimate her.

She settled back against the padded frame and combed her fingers through Castle's hair. He was burning up, but that was normal for him, that was how she knew it was working. And her bare legs were cold, sitting here in her underwear and one his t-shirts, so she tugged softly on him until he rolled to his back.

She kept his head in her lap despite how it impeded her ability for a fast response, the weight and warmth of him seeping into her. She had a loose arm around his shoulders, tucked under his chin, and she could feel his breath across her forearm.

That always made her feel better. Castle breathing. Always eased her mind, helped her sleep. She had seriously thought about putting a baby monitor on him when he worked late in their office at home, just so she could fall asleep to the sound of him. Keyboard noises, paper shredder, those wouldn't bother her so long as she heard him alive.

Yeah, something wrong with her. She knew that.

She tripped her fingers through his hair and laid her hand at his shoulder, resisted the urge to check his wound again. Watched pot, all that. Instead, she turned to her other side and glanced at Salome.

Her color was good, which was a relief after the blood loss. She was warm, maybe even feverish, but not too bad. Kate had loosened the tourniquet before she'd gotten up for the laptop and a shirt to wear, and now she leaned forward and let it out another notch with the turnkey. Salome issued a long sigh and her lashes fluttered, probably an autonomic nervous system response to the renewed blood flow.

The bandage held, the wound didn't weep, and Kate leaned back.

She didn't know what came next, how this would play out. Salome was at their mercy, to some degree, but the woman had an agenda she was playing to, and they didn't know all the pieces. Beckett wasn't entirely sure that the facts were as simple as they'd been presented - she _knew_ they couldn't be - but what was really going on here, she couldn't figure out.

Beckett leaned over for the laptop once more, settled it on one thigh, precarious position with Castle taking up all the room.

Fondness stole over her, stupid and cloying and making her melt. She bent forward and kissed the corner of his eye where those laugh lines crinkled when he smiled at her, her lips warmed by his skin. And when she'd had her moment, she opened the laptop and called up the known facts document she'd created at home.

There was something here that investigation would reveal, if only she could-

The trilling of a phone pierced the recuperating stillness, and it made her jostle the laptop. The computer slid towards Salome and hit her hip, and the woman groaned, something struggling just under consciousness.

Kate snagged the machine, closed the lid and tucked it into her chest, trying to get her feet under her so that she could get the damn phone. Castle's burner, she thought, and only stateside and the section chief had that number. Salome went rigid as consciousness approached with what had to be pain, but Kate was wrestling with Castle's body still draped over her thighs.

The woman dragged in a harsh breath and her eyes opened. Lashes dark and fluttering, entirely not the same picture as the woman Beckett had met in the glare of a burning building.

"Ilda?" Salome mumbled. "Dónde estás?"

Kate froze, the phone still ringing, that violent burr of urgency. But Salome stirred and struggled with something, a bright pink on her cheeks that made the olive complexion turn rich with color and light.

"Ilda... mi cor..."

Ilda was a woman's name. A girl's name. What was she saying?

 _Ilda, where are you?_

"Salome?" Kate whispered, lightly touching Lo's brow. Warm. The woman turned into the touch as if seeking a lover - or a beloved. A girl? A partner?

She felt ashamed to think of it, but she did it anyway, the plan forming without conscious thought, the phone still jangling loudly enough to draw Salome towards consciousness.

Kate leaned in close and let her voice go light, airy, let her hand caress Salome's forehead and cup her cheek, tender. "¿Salome? ¿Qué necesitas?" _What do you need?_

Salome groaned and her eyes opened, but shock trickled down and through those dark depths, and then she was gone again, back under once more.

And the phone had stopped ringing.

Damn it.

Beckett gritted her teeth and turned back to her husband, eased an arm under his neck and shoulders to put him on to the mattress. She stood up - in the middle of the bed with the laptop still cradled in one arm - and she stepped down to the foot, and then off to the floor. The mattress jostled them, but neither Castle nor Salome so much as sighed.

Kate set the laptop into the vault, closed the door on it and the diamonds, and then she grabbed Castle's burner from the bedside table. Unknown number flashed on the screen.

Section chief?

Beckett pressed her thumb to the entry and put the phone to her ear, waiting for it to redial back through the complicated CIA exchange. Might as well; she had nothing else.

They were at a dead end here.


	3. Chapter 3

**Close Encounters 30**

* * *

While Beckett waited for the phone to go through channels, tracing the call to its origins, she touched the back of Castle's neck. He was burning up, cheeks bright pink, ears red, the tips practically glowing. She remembered, vividly, what it had been like to sit at his bedside after the super-pneumonia had caught hold of him and the drugs hadn't been enough. Seeing him all shiny pink and breathing easy now was such a balm to her heart that she had to sit down on the bed.

She hadn't realized just how much his illness had damaged her. Talk about aftereffects of the regimen, what were a few scratches on her blood cells when her psyche had been so warped by his dying? Near-death, though he had done that to her too. Faked his own death.

Her spy sure did have a lot of resurrection in him.

The phone beeped once in her ear to say it had connected and then rang through. She sat up straight and frowned into the phone, wondering who had called their burner.

"Agent Castle?"

She cleared her throat. "This is his partner. Who is this?"

"Um, I - his partner?"

"Who is this?" she repeated, checking the phone to mark the time before putting it back to her ear. "ID yourself or I hang up."

"This is - damn - Agent Castle called me Ito, Esteban Junior? And I think that might have stuck."

She gave a soft breath of laughter. "Ito, yes, that's stuck, unfortunately for you. Ito, how did you get this number?"

He didn't seem to hear her question. "Escúchame, I've been on Arroyo-"

" _Code_ ," she stressed, temper flaring.

"No, no, you don't have _time_. We don't have time. I ditched the Preacher; he's nothing. I'm on Alfonso, and he's _something_ , he's on _you_ , right now - he's tracking your location."

"What?" she hissed. "Ito, _report._ "

"There's not time for that! They are _on you_. They have the car."

" _What_?" The damn SUV had a fucking tracker. "Ito, what's their ETA?"

"I don't know. They're disbanding right now, breaking up the party. I saw video footage, you guys grabbed a woman, put her in that dark SUV? You've got to ditch it."

"Yes. We will. Right now. I need-"

"I can meet you!" His anxiety was palpable, and it transmitted to her, got her to her feet and grabbing her keys. Ito himself sounded breathless on the phone. "I can meet you with new wheels. I'll take the SUV and drive it into the jungle. It'll be fine. I can help."

"Okay," she said, taking Castle's phone with her and the keys, searching for pants. Fuck, she needed pants. Here. "Okay, yes. Give me an address, Ito."

He rattled off a street name and a landmark in Spanish, and she jumped to hike up her jeans, phone pressed to her ear.

"Ito? Ten minutes."

"Si. Ten minutes. Ten minutes."

She ran for the SUV.

* * *

Midway to the garage she realized she hadn't restrained Salome, so she had to backtrack, cursing herself for a fool as she flew through the courtyard. She had no time, but Castle was unconscious, and that _had_ to come first. She had his back when he was down, period.

She wound up handcuffing Salome's ankle to the footboard, the only solid piece on the bed frame she could find, and then binding her hands in a ziptie. Best she could do, scanning the room for weapons, before she finally grabbed Castle under the armpits and hauled him out of the bed entirely.

She winced when his full weight came down on her thighs and lap, and she had to literally lower herself to the floor in order to take the brunt of his fall. He didn't even stir, which could be frightening if she let herself think about it, but she didn't have time to think.

She had to _go._ Quick exchange of wheels, and then she was back. Twenty minutes, maybe thirty, round trip, and Salome had lost too much blood to hurt Castle.

God. It felt so fucking precarious.

She put her hand to the back of his neck and squirmed out from under him. With a thought for his self-defense, she gathered up the laptop and her phone and shoved them into the vault, but she pulled out one of the knives and hid it under the bedside table where it would be eye level for him.

Too much damn time.

She hauled ass for the door, flying through the villa and across the courtyard, back out along the adobe walk to the attached garage. She slammed her hand against the button and the garage door started up, and then she had to close the rear passenger door where they had left it standing open.

She jumped behind the wheel and jammed the key into the ignition, chanting _faster faster faster_ under her breath as she put the car into gear. The door lumbered the last few inches upward and she was already pressing the gas and squealing out in reverse, the map of the city interposed in her mind's eye.

Just get the fucking SUV away from the safe house. That's all. She had to lead them away. Even if she was only acting decoy, even if she never made it to that rendezvous with Ito, she had to get them away from Castle.

He had a little under three hours remaining of unconsciousness.

* * *

She left the SUV running and leaped to the ground, running around the hood of the vehicle to meet with Ito just ahead of her. She had switched off the headlights blocks ago, racing through the streets as carefully as she could, nearly blind in the dark. But she couldn't pick up a tail. The cartel was ruthless and they owned the Cali district; there would be no help for them if she fucked this up.

The night was deep and Ito had turned on his parking lights, but she saw the lit end of a cigarette through the dark windshield. He opened his door and stood, and the lack of urgency in his body language reassured her.

Alfonso and his crew hadn't found the villa. Castle was safe.

"Thank you," she said, rushing forward to meet him. "Saved my ass."

"Where's Agent Castle?" he asked, looking past her to SUV.

"He's on assignment," she said tersely, waiting only to get back to that assignment.

Ito's eyes flicked to her and he tossed the cigarette to the ground, stepped on it delicately with the toe of his boot. "Here are keys," he said, and held out his hand.

She snatched them, hurrying around his immobile form for the car he'd brought. It was a Fiat, squat and compact, much more maneuverable in the tight streets than the cartel team's SUV. She squeezed in behind the wheel, breathing in the lingering scent of cigarettes and tequila.

It wasn't a company car.

That was her first thought to register.

Second was - _I didn't bring my gun._

She had already started the engine; she had already moved to put the car into gear when that revelation hit her like a taser.

And then the passenger door opened. Ito sank into the seat with a grace of movement she had seen outside in the street as he had stubbed out his cigarette, carefully, economically. No effort wasted.

The Desert Eagle in his hand was steady - and overwhelmingly massive in the small confines of the Fiat.

"Agent," he said slowly, slamming the door shut. "I want the woman. I know you have her."

Kate's mouth went dry.

Not even her fucking gun, and yet she had taken the time to slide a knife under the bedside table for Castle to see should he wake up and need it.

No wonder he was always furious with her. She had a mental block when it came to self-preservation in the face of Castle's own danger.

"Do not look like that," Ito said. Esteban Junior, who had replaced Lo's handler after his death. The man was a fucking professional, and this wasn't just cartel business. He was too good for a locally-grown hitman. "You know how this will go. Hands on the wheel, ten and two like a good girl. Now. Drive."

"Where?" she gritted out, stalling for time.

He cuffed the side of her face with the butt of the semi-automatic and she felt it all through her jaw and deep into her ear, sharp agony.

"Drive. I want the woman. I want what she stole, and I mean to have it."

Beckett struggled to breathe evenly through her nose, her jaw pulsing with that hit. She tried to open her mouth to speak, but the pain made it impossible.

Fuck, he was good.

She pressed her foot to the gas pedal and scrambled for a plan.

* * *

She was having trouble thinking.

She had heard once on some kind of documentary that when a normal person thought about himself or members of his family, he used one area of his brain, and when he thought about imaginary people, he used another area entirely - and so when asked to think about himself in the future, a normal person used the 'imaginary people' area of his brain to picture himself at a future event.

She realized that was very true. Her future self was hard to hold on to, was running through her fingers like jello that wouldn't set.

She braked at the stoplight, flipped on the signal for a right hand turn, heart pounding, jaw brittle with every pulse of blood to her nonfunctioning brain.

Ito laid a nonchalant hand over hers at the gear shift. "Don't even try it. You have eleven minutes before I shoot you in the head."

"Eleven," she gritted out. Her nostrils flared with the effort.

"I clocked you at ten and thirty. Even if we pad our time to account for whatever evasive maneuvers you might have taken, I'm giving you extra to do this right. Obeying the traffic laws. I'm not an unreasonable man."

She grunted something that was universal for _yeah, right_ and flipped off the turn signal.

"Good girl," he hummed.

She really _should_ turn right to go straight to the villa, and she had done it automatically thinking to get to an area of town she knew better. But she was sure now that he wouldn't believe her.

Eleven minutes. And whatever move she made had to be accomplished in a section of town nondescript enough to not lead back to the safe house. So not on the lone stretch of road that led _only_ to the vacation homes on the promontory, and not on the exit for that road either. Not on the loop around the town that could point that direction. Not-

"Pay attention. The light is green. I didn't hit you that hard. Usually that blow is enough to stun, and to shut them up, but not to scramble your wits. So don't pretend."

She swallowed and stepped on the gas, shifting out of first and up into second, third, trying to shift her brain into gear as well. Ahead of them was the long main drag of the resort town, the fire-ravaged block to their north, between her and the road looping out of town and pointing towards the villa.

Her hands gripped the wheel.

She had eleven minutes but she had no time at all. It had to be here, on the main street, or it would be obvious where she had been headed.

She knew what she had to do.

Oh, God. No seatbelt; he'd gotten in and told her to drive and she didn't have her seatbelt on. Reaching for it now would only tip him off.

She shifted her hands to meet at the top of the steering wheel and she scanned the street, rolling through the next green light at the speed limit. Her jaw ached. Her brain was scrambling for a scenario that didn't end badly for her.

At the next light, two fire trucks were still parked outside the burned-out nail salon. The place had gone up fast because of the chemicals, and the building next door was partially gutted as well. A big mobile dumpster had been placed on the side street to her left; blackened beams and smoke-damaged dry wall were already piled to the top.

"Easy near the fire department," Ito said softly. "Don't call attention to us."

She gripped the steering wheel, her hands as close together as she could get them. Hoping for a cushion. The light turned yellow, and she put on her left turn signal, eased into the turning lane, came to a stop.

"Good girl. Very good."

She gave him a slow look; he had an iPad on his lap and was tracking them. A map display showed the car in bright blinking blue. Was he relaying that information back to someone else? She had to do this now. She would have to be - ruthless about it.

The light turned green.

Kate punched it. Floored the gas pedal so that the car rocketed forward. She swung a too-wide left turn and aimed the little Fiat straight for the massive, looming dumpster.


	4. Chapter 4

**Close Encounters 30**

* * *

The car reached impact.

The Fiat slammed into the dumpster with a terrible brute force, throwing her violently forward.

Her head ricocheted off her hands and her jaw exploded with fire. Ringing in her ears, the high whine of the engine, and then black.

When she came to, lifting her head on a neck that seemed disjointed, her vision was obscured by a pulsing red. She tried to press against the steering wheel to guide her, give her a sense of where she was, but the dissonance threw her off and she fell forward, hitting her cheek, brain sloshing.

Okay. Stay here a moment.

She squinted one eye and turned her head, slowly, with pain, towards the passenger seat.

Ito wasn't entirely in the seat.

Impact had flung the man into the spider-webbed windshield, his body crumpled at the dash.

Oh.

He wasn't quite dead.

A slow blink of his eyes told her he was struggling to orient as well, that it had registered with him, what was at stake, and his awareness sent a fresh jolt of adrenaline through her system.

Beckett fumbled for the driver's door, tried to push off the steering wheel again. Ito groaned, but it sounded garbled, the noises Frankenstein's monster made. He shifted and his body seemed to collapse towards the floorboards.

One side of Ito's head was caved in.

But he was groping for the gun.

She had to get out of the car.

It was still the eerie quiet after an accident when nothing moved, when sounds were muted and far away, when the struggle towards life was paused and hanging in the balance. She had to move, _had to_ ; she had to get out the damn car.

The handle of the door was defying her, but she was afraid to turn her back on Ito. There was a cold fire in his eyes that spoke of survival, but the footwell of the car had been crushed up into the seats.

His legs were pinned. Hers were not. The dashboard had been shoved six inches her direction, and her chest was tight where the steering wheel had struck her sternum. It was a tight fit, but if she could make her body work, she could wriggle out.

Door must be bent into the frame. Window then, window.

She risked taking a look and saw the shattered glass, the fragments somehow looming in her vision, out of proportion to reality. But already things were beginning to focus again, already her senses were waking up, shaking off their stunned immobility. She could smell gasoline and smoke, but it might just be from the nail salon. She was light-headed, and a slick, wet heat poured down her eyes.

Bleeding. Head wound. She was losing blood.

Ito groaned, and something in the sound alarmed her, caused her to turn to him.

He had the gun.

She lunged-lurched toward him, managed to get a hand at his wrist and slam his arm upward - just as the report went off. The bullet punched a hole in the ceiling and shattered the moonroof, and the recoil of the Desert Eagle slammed back through her body and made her moan.

Ito was fighting her, but he was uncoordinated. He couldn't move his legs and she was half-sprawled over the center console, her hips held fast by the steering wheel. She wrestled for the weapon, clawed her fingers down his arm to no effect. He smashed a crooked fist at her head and she saw stars, the terrible clash of her brain inside her skull, but she hung on to the weapon.

She angled her thumb into the space between his palm and the grip, and she dug in, fighting for her life, using only sheer force of will. Ito bellowed and the sound shook the loose places in her head. Her body twisted violently as he wrenched, but she had the gun, she had control of the gun-

She shot him point blank, the barrel back against his jaw, and she watched as brain matter and bone fragments sprayed a Rorschach across the interior of the car.

Her stomach heaved.

Beckett clutched the Desert Eagle and turned for the shattered window, started climbing out.

* * *

Her shoulder took the brunt of her fall to the pavement, and she rolled and kept her head lifted, much as she could with the blood and disorientation. She rolled away from the Fiat and stopped flat on her back, staring up at the pink-hazed night sky.

For a strange half-second, a heartbeat, she laid motionless with the weapon in her hand and shattered glass in a halo around her, and she saw her son.

The impression of him rose up like his body was cuddled against her neck, like she felt him rather than saw, her son curled at her chest like he had done when he was a newborn, that little ball of heat tucked into her.

She took a heavy breath and got a clean lungful of air, and she sat up.

Her head swam, dizzy, and then her feet were under her. She rose to stand, swaying like a drunk, and she had to reach out and grab the lamp post to hang on, to keep herself tethered to the world.

Castle.

There were sirens now. She was standing on the side of the street with her arm around a lamp post, leaning so hard into it that she was nearly bent double. She staggered and pushed off, found herself upright again and moving.

She slogged past the Fiat, and though it was evident there had been a driver, and her blood was smeared across the steering wheel and the door frame, she was in no state to deal with it. She hoped it looked like a cartel killing. Her feet were tripping over pieces of the car that had been torn violently from the main body; she kept having to steady herself on the car, the dumpster.

Damn, the fire trucks. She had not thought this through very carefully. There were first responders still here. She had to go the other way. She had to-

"Senora? Senora, que es-"

"No, no," she interrupted, pushing off against the man's chest. He was in a t-shirt and the fire-retardant pants - black with vivid neon yellow bands just below the knees. His accent was thick and her head muddled enough that _no_ was all she could get out. He clutched at her shoulders and her knee gave way; something deplorably weak about being manhandled right off her feet.

The fire fighter bodily carried her towards the sidewalk and put her down, all the way down to her ass so that she groaned. He was telling her to lean forward, head between her knees; he was shouting for his buddies, for the fire fighter paramedic to attend to her.

Not good.

He turned his back and headed a few steps towards the corner, and then down towards the fire-ruined building where the trucks were parked. She saw her chance.

Beckett got a hand to the sidewalk, wincing as her palm was sliced open by debris, shoving off. She got to her feet heavily, swiped the back of her forearm against her eyes to clear her vision. The kind fire fighter had taken two more steps, both hands cupped at his mouth to bullhorn a shout down the block.

She was wearing sandals, she realized stupidly. No wonder her feet hurt.

"Hey! No! Para!"

But she didn't stop, couldn't stop. Beckett picked up her pace, pushed it, began to jog down the sidewalk. She veered into the street behind the dumpster so it would block his view of her and she used some last reserve of will power to force herself forward, running down the street and into the darkness.

* * *

Castle woke on the floor.

His body instantly shifted into gear and he jerked upright, snagged the wrist of the hand reaching for him, twisted-

"Madre de-!"

"Shit," he gasped, releasing Salome and falling back on his ass as his brain caught up to him.

She giggled, sounding punch drunk, and mumbled something about his beautiful chest. In English more broken than she used to have. Playing.

"Lo," he growled. "Hands off."

"Why you sleep on the floor, beautiful machine-"

"Fuck, I do not need this," he muttered, shifting to his knees and rising to his feet. He saw Salome on the bed above him; she had been handcuffed to the footboard of the bedframe. His instincts kicked hard. "You seem to be doing much better-"

"Feel terrible," she sighed, her lashes drifting upwards to reveal deep violet eyes. "Mangled by your slinky partner's butchering job. Where is she? I would like to put my hands on her." Lashes wavered, something calculating but also kinky slid behind her face, like a thing trying to get out.

A fucking kick in the gut, this woman in his bed, those velvet eyes. He'd thought once-

Beckett. She had handcuffed Salome to the bed. And he saw the pieces of a ziptie littering the floor near his head where Salome must have gotten her hands free.

"Stay," he growled, jabbing his finger in her direction.

He turned hard and checked the bathroom first, saw his own shiny pink face in the mirror. He inspected his side for half a second, enough to confirm the wound had closed up - roughly, the scar looked fragile - and then he pushed out of the bedroom for the tiled hall.

He saw blood spatter where they hadn't cleaned up after their triage attempts, and smeared places where they had stepped. He had no way of telling if it was fresh, and he didn't dare call out her name with Salome listening from the bedroom. He didn't want that woman knowing his wife's name, nor did he want her hearing the urgency in his voice.

The villa was too quiet, and he had woken up on the floor, with Salome handcuffed. Something had happened.

There were too many unknowns for him to speculate, but of course he was anyway, speculating like fucking crazy, afraid of what it might mean for Salome to have been cuffed to the bedframe.

A fight. A need for Salome to be restrained. There was _no_ way Lo had taken on Beckett and done damage to his wife without receiving any blows herself, but he couldn't very well go in that room and tip his hand, ask her what the fuck she'd done to his _slinky_ partner.

His side burned from the exertion. He was supposed to give it a rest, let the scar set; it was all too fresh and he wasn't entirely sure he'd slept the full four hours. Kate usually timed it, told him to go back to sleep when he roused like this. He felt ready but he also felt scoured raw, nerves exposed.

Where was Kate?

He stepped into the courtyard but it was clear, the wind tossing the water from the fountain. He glanced up to the sky and saw dark clouds, the pearled grey of an approaching storm, felt the spatter of spitting rain on his cheeks.

Not good. Not good.

His heart was being squeezed.

Castle picked up his pace and exited the courtyard through the south door, ran down the tile hall for the attached garage. He came out into the second little green space and stumbled to a stop. The garage was empty.

Empty.

And then the perimeter alarm sounded like a klaxon from the living room speakers, and his guts washed out.

* * *

Salome was upright on the bed, crouched at the foot and looking combat ready when Castle blazed inside. His gun was gone, but Kate had handcuffed and ziptied the woman, and if Salome had gotten to his weapon, he wasn't sure she'd be here. He wasn't sure _he_ would be here.

"There's a knife under the bedside table," she said, eyes cat-like. "What is the alarm for?"

He dropped to the floor, probed underneath for the knife - it was one of Kate's. He stood with it, turned his back on Salome, popped open the picture frame to reveal the safe behind it. He hunched his shoulders to block Lo's view, punched in the code as fast as he could to keep her from overhearing the number of buttons he pushed, and then he opened the vault.

His weapon was inside. And Kate's. Fuck, her weapon was still here. As well as the laptop, the diamonds, the other knives, and-

Fuck.

Kate's phone.

Not his, nowhere that he could find, but her phone was here. He reached in for his weapon and her phone, replacing the knife with its mates, and then slammed the vault shut. When he turned, Salome was watching him, calculating, and the alarm was still sounding from the living room.

He jogged out, weapon held down at his thigh, her phone in his back pocket. He took the long hall to the living room at a run, and then skidded to a stop before the security set-up. He checked the monitors, one after another along the grid, until he finally spotted the cause of the perimeter alarm.

A figure was walking through the grey, between the shadows of the evergreen cashew trees just past the garden wall. Blood and gore, clothes-

Holy _God._ It was Kate.


	5. Chapter 5

**Close Encounters 30**

* * *

He caught up to Kate at the edge of the treeline, caught her before she could collapse. Soaked to the skin, shivering, the smell of salt and blood.

Her face was - hell. He gingerly touched her cheek, the ocular orbit of her swollen eye. "Kate, oh God, baby, what happened?"

She gripped the waistband of his boxers and listed into him, a smear of her blood against his cheek. "Car - car accident. Ito-"

"What? Hang on. Wait, sweetheart, let me get you back inside." He dipped and swept her up behind her knees, but she cried out and went rigid, closing her eyes. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'll be as fast as I can, honey."

He carried her back up the path to the manicured back lawn, through the back gate, inside the garden. The weather had turned against them and the trees tossed, flowers already pressed to the ground with the wind and the rain, and she was soaking wet. Bleeding from a gash on her face, she also sported a swollen eye, livid scrapes down one cheek, and an ugly purple bruise that bloomed along the right side of her face.

He shouldered his way through the back door and kicked it shut, and she groaned, a hand to her jaw. "Castle. The alarm."

"Right. Sorry." Must be echoing in her head like gunfire. He put her on the couch and typed in the all-clear code to the laptop, reset the alarm. When he turned back to her, she was struggling to sit up.

He came back to the couch, sank to his knees before her. "Baby, what happened?" He touched his thumb to her split eyebrow and she sucked in a breath.

"Car accident. I - ran the car into a dumpster." She winced and her lip burst, fresh blood staining the cracks.

"Okay," he said, pausing to file that away. "Never mind. Story later. Ice. You need ice and - I need to clean this up, see if I have to stitch this cut above your eyebrow."

"Feel like shit," she whispered, one eye cracking open to look at him.

"I know, honey." He lightly kissed a clean spot on her forehead - she was covered in filth, detritus from the grove of cashew trees, soaking wet on top of it. He smelled ocean on her, had no idea what she'd done to get back here. "You can tell me what happened while I clean you up."

He started to rise to his feet, but she caught his wrist with a wince. "You okay?" Kate asked. Her fingers went to his side, but she jerked them back. "Hot. Damn. Your skin is on fire."

"I'm okay. That's how it's supposed to be," he told her firmly. "Lean back. Let me get the first aid kit."

He left at a trot, heading for the bedroom. Salome was still crouched at the foot of the bed, working a thumb under the handcuffs, but the wound above her knee had opened up; the blood had soaked through the bandage.

He had to deal with this first. "Lie down. You're going to bleed to death." He shoved on her shoulder and she cried out, but he didn't think it was real. "Let me tighten the tourniquet. You can't keep moving around. It won't heal."

"You - fucking - she burned the fire into me."

"She did. And she saved your life. So let it keep you held together until we can get you the fuck out of here. You don't want her to have to QuikClot it again, do you?"

"Ay, that is the holy hellfire, QuikClot?" She said it in that harsh accent, making her vowels almost unrecognizable.

"I don't know who you're trying to fool," he muttered. "But _lie down_."

She went, flopping back to the mattress, but this time he saw the way her face blanched, the exhaustion that was the consequence of her extreme fight or flight. She was using up all her energy on fear, and he didn't exactly know why. She should know better than to fear him.

He retrieved the first aid kit from the bathroom and thought about that for a second. With the kit slung over his shoulder, one foot out the door, he paused and turned back to the bed.

"Lo," he said carefully. "You know me. I was your handler for a decade. Didn't I always follow through? You're safe."

She laughed bitterly and put a hand over her eyes, ignored him.

That might have been the exact wrong thing to say to her. Because the man she had known _had_ no loyalties, and more than that, he'd had a ruthless ability to cut his losses. And she knew that.

And she also must know that she was a loss.

But he didn't have time nor did he have the compassion to make the effort of explaining. How his life was different - and so his professional life had changed as well.

He jogged back down the hall to the living room to doctor his wife. Kate was his first priority.

* * *

Beckett was dizzy every time she tried to sit up. Minor concussion, she self-diagnosed, despite the fact that Castle said her eyes tracked and her pupils dilated normally. He was being very good, not yelling at her for running out of here without her gun, but he was interrogating the hell out of her at the same time.

"How'd you get back?" he muttered. "No car, you tossed my phone. Damn, woman, did you _crawl_ back here?"

He was cleaning the cuts on her forearms, slowly, one by one, as if his attention to detail would keep her from feeling so bad. Her head ached, and she wanted nothing more than silence and a place to close her eyes, but the sting of antiseptic in the shallow scrapes kept her with him.

"Walked for a while," she admitted. "Stole a car. But police were crawling all over the accident. So I had to ditch the car at the 90 loop and walk west."

"And then?"

"Mm." She shifted on the couch, wincing as her head throbbed. "Missed my mark a little."

He scowled. "Is that why your clothes are stiff with salt? You walk straight to the ocean, baby?"

"Might have? And then I just - followed the coastline. Figured it was better that way anyway. Throw off - whoever Ito had with him."

"Kate," he sighed. He was touching her jaw, manipulating the hinge socket as if looking for breaks, but damn it hurt. "You walked the coastline."

"I kinda got dragged out a couple times."

"Fuck, _Kate_ -" But he cut himself off with a growl and a rough shake of his head, and she really really loved him.

She really loved him. "Best I could."

"No, baby, I know. You did good. You just never ask for help, do you?"

She whined as his thumb pressed to her bruise. "I tried to call, but the operator wouldn't connect me. I don't think I was being very clear."

"You're still kind of shocky, Beckett." His hand settled at her hip and she groaned, caught unaware by the pain. "Fuck, what is this?"

"Steering wheel," she hissed, batting his hand away.

"When you say you crashed the car..." he started slowly. He was hovering over her now, and he lifted her shirt, cursed softly.

She glanced down and saw the bright bloom of purple-black and red along her torso. "Oh. That's - not good."

"You could have internal bleeding," he said tightly. "Beckett."

"No," she insisted. "No hospital. We can't. Ito - whoever he was with - he wasn't _alone_ in this. I go to a hospital and I'm dead."

He flattened his fingers and probed her stomach, making her flinch. "Hurt?"

"Mm, yeah, but just - bruised hurt. Not my insides filling up with blood hurt."

"You're not funny."

She opened her good eye. He had slathered the other one in some kind of cream and then layered a cloth with chemical ice over it. It felt blissfully numb. "I'm kinda funny," she mumbled.

"No, honey, you're in shock. And you've lost some blood. And probably, yes, a concussion."

"Mild," she insisted.

"You're incorrigible." He probed her abs until she was growling at him, but he shook his head. "Not rigid. Which is good. Just really badly bruised. Really. Badly. Damn, Kate-"

"I think it's the regimen?" she whispered, wincing as his face turned thunderous. "I've noticed that I bruise easily now. It's - um - bright like yours is."

His nostrils flared. "Are you healing faster? I mean, I know it's hard to tell but is it _that_ kind of-"

"I don't think so," she said quickly. "Actually, Boyd asked me to take a sample the next time I had any kind of injury, freeze it for him. He wants to take a look and see if the damage to my red blood cells is occurring now or at production."

He looked both livid and curious, and she really loved him for that too. For his tenderness as he took care of her. But also for loving her so fiercely that he wanted to protect her even from herself, and yet being just as curious and inquisitive as she was.

"I'll draw your blood," he said quietly. "If you've got the full regimen kit with you, the back of the pack has a needle and pipette."

"Has two," she mumbled. "Two pipettes. Get both."

"Okay, will do," he said softly. His fingers brushed over her stomach and drew her shirt back down. "We need to clean you up after this, sweetheart. Be thinking it over - shower or bath."

"Bath," she said immediately, then winced. "But I guess shower. Ito was looking for something that Salome stole. They're all looking for it - whatever it is. We don't have time-"

"We have time," he said. "This is a safe house, and I can guarantee you weren't followed. All of that ocean surfing you did in the rain."

She opened her good eye and glanced at him, but he was already leaning in close and touching a kiss to her busted lip. She sighed, lifted her fingers - raw and scraped - to his cheek.

"Love you," they said together. How easy it was, how she was appreciative and grateful and she saw it mirrored back at her.

This time in stereo, "Love you more."

She grinned against his lips and he kissed her again, again. And then pulled back, just barely, looking at her.

"You never cease to amaze me," he murmured, leaving her with that sentiment sitting warm and bright in her chest as he stood up to get the kit.

* * *

He could hear roaring from the guest bathroom upstairs, the thunder of water filling the tub. The tile echoed with it, the air humid and close. She was swaying on her feet, trying to get undressed when Castle came back from putting away the kit.

"Your clothes are ruined," he murmured. He shook his head at her as he tried to be very gentle, help her pull the shirt over her head. She winced anyway, though he could see her trying to remain stoic. "You slogged through three miles of beach and ocean to get to me, Kate. My beautiful, strong wife."

She sighed and he cupped the side of her face, brought her in for a soft kiss. Gentle. _Be gentle,_ he reminded himself.

"You were unconscious," she mumbled. "Mostly. You still have nine minutes."

He laughed, couldn't help it, how terrible it was that she knew the exact four hour mark after going through all of that. "Yeah, honey, woke early."

"You should sleep the rest of it-"

"Hush, baby." He ignored her bright-eyed concern, untangled the strands of hair from her necklace before he removed it. She let out a noise and wrapped her fingers around the chain, trying to keep it. "No, Kate. It needs to be cleaned anyway. You can have it back after bath."

"It's my baby-" she mumbled.

He shook his head and kissed her knuckles, unwrapping her fingers from the chain. "Your baby is at home with his grandfather, I promise. This is just the necklace that Ipicked out for him to give you for Christmas. Let go, honey."

Her cheeks flushed, and he found himself ridiculously pleased by how much she loved it. She had worn it every day of every mission, a talisman, despite how necessarily unidentifiable it was. She _liked_ it, and that made him happy.

She released the chain and he put it on the counter, turned back to her again. She had goose bumps and her bruises were livid. He lightly pressed her torso against his to keep her skin warm, and he dropped his hands to her pants, working at the button of her jeans without being able to see it, chest to chest as they were.

"I'm cold," she whispered.

"I know you are. Gonna warm you up."

"Where's Salome?"

"In the bed," he muttered.

She whined and jerked her hips sharply as he tried to peel down her jeans. "Let me - ow - Castle. Let me sit down and do it myself."

"Okay," he sighed, feeling unhelpful to her. "Let me put your clothes in the laundry. We can try to salvage-"

"No, just trash them," she said, her face contorted as she worked slowly at her jeans, bending only when necessary. "Skirt's trashed too. You have another pair of your black pants?"

"They won't fit," he told her.

She laughed and groaned, doubling up and then leaning back against the tub. "No, honey, I know. I meant - if you have another pair, I can wear your pajama pants, those light cotton with the drawstring-"

"Yeah, yeah, I do. You can have those. Of course. But let me try putting these through the dryer at least."

"Okay," she said, a little alertness coming back to her face. "Yeah. And get me a t-shirt."

"I feel like you're sending me out of the bathroom," he said gravely.

Her smile flickered. "I am. You need to check on Salome. Her knee-"

"She was awake. Seemed fine."

Kate jerked upright, hissing between her teeth as she clawed the tub to brace herself. "Shit. Shit. She - was awake? Castle she is dangerous."

"Don't you think I know that," he growled back, leaning down to help her ease those jeans off her calves. She groaned and clutched his shoulders, and he helped her to stand. "You must have ziptied her hands, but they were free-"

"Oh, fuck, Castle, why are you in _here_?"

"She's still cuffed."

"For how long? _I_ can pick those cuffs, you can too. She-"

"Oh." Shit. She had a point. He glanced to the door. "Damn it."

"Go. Get clothes, secure her. I'm serious. She can't get loose. I don't know what she stole, but I don't think she's going to leave here until she gets it. And who knows who else is out there-"

"Fine. Fine, Kate. Let me get you in the bath-"

"No. I'll wait right here. I'm not going to be struggling to get out of the fucking tub if you need me."

There was no arguing with her, never mind pointing out that she could hardly be of any help to him in her state. He grabbed a towel, wrapped it loosely around her body, and tugged the ends closed. "Stay. You hear me? You stay, Beckett. I'll be right back."

She nodded, eyes brimming with concern, and he cupped her face and kissed her again. She shivered and tucked her face into his neck for a moment, surprising him, before she pulled back again. "I'm staying."

"When I get back, it's bath and debrief. You tell me what Ito said, word for word, and we are going to figure this shit out."

"We need a new plan," she said, shivering again.

"Yeah," he admitted. "We need a new plan."

* * *

Castle was gone too long and she wasn't having that.

She looked longingly at the bath, but it had been more than ten minutes now and she couldn't do it.

Kate tucked the towel tighter around her breasts and headed out of the bathroom, grunting when her shoulder collided with the door frame. She was light-headed still, but she also felt absolutely ravenous, and she actually stopped midway down the stairs to press her fist into her stomach and still its rumbling.

Okay, this was - new.

Starving. Maybe whatever the serum and infusions had done to her blood needed some instant protein or minerals to get her back on track. Huh. Now that she thought about it, she had felt like this when she was pregnant.

Kate let out a fast breath and tried not to let that thought stick, but her knees went loose and she had to sit down.

She was not pregnant. She was _not_. She couldn't be. They had been very careful, and then Castle had gone to a friend's surgery clinic and gotten snipped and she was _not_ pregnant. Pregnant was impossible.

It was the regimen. It was the last year - _two years_ \- of being horribly on the fine line between balanced and toxic, balanced and deficient. She had this feeling now because she needed to replenish what her body was using up as it worked to heal her bruised face, her swollen eye. That was normal too, maybe not to this extent, but that's all it was.

Castle couldn't find her freaking out on the stairs. Panicking about something that hadn't happened.

They had talked about this. Very seriously. They had talked and their family was perfect as it was, and she couldn't get pregnant.

She wondered, obliquely, if a Colombian pharmacy had the morning after pill. If it worked for many mornings after.

No, stop. Stop.

She wasn't pregnant.

 _Eat something._

She had been bashed in the face with a Desert Eagle, she had been in a fucking head-on collision, and seriously, previous to all of that she had been dead. So. Really. She was having a panic attack over an impossibility.

Oh. She was having a panic attack. Castle had taken longer than she liked and now she was panicking.

Well, fuck.

Kate dipped her head between her knees and counted her breaths, immediately felt her heart rate beginning to slow and her clammy hands stop trembling. She let her body go loose, let herself take a second, and it actually worked.

Better. That was better. Okay.

Okay.

She lifted her head and wrapped a hand around the railing, hauled herself to her feet again. She didn't like Castle in there with Salome alone, and she could admit that. She trusted him, of course, but she didn't trust that woman, and Lo seemed to think that she could slide her body all over his without consequence.

Well, that was the issue, wasn't it? Kate was jealous. No. Not jealous - possessive.

Castle was _hers_ and she wanted Salome to know it.

She was still only in a towel, but she didn't mind that statement at all. She needed to grab a tortilla, a piece of fruit, something, and find Castle - start their plan. Enough of feeling weak; she was done with that.


	6. Chapter 6

**Close Encounters 30**

* * *

Castle tightened the tourniquet and checked his bandage once more, but a movement at the doorway had him tensing, spinning on his heel. His side flared once, and he caught his breath, but he saw Kate in that white towel, a banana in her fingers. And her poor swollen face-

"God, baby, your eye," he sighed, releasing the key on the tourniquet and moving for his wife.

"What are you doing?" she said, dodging his fingers. She caught his thumb with one hand and held his hand against her sternum, looking past him to Salome.

"She was conscious and bleeding pretty badly again. I had to tighten it up. The QuikClot is doing more damage than she can sustain. We have to try stitching it."

Kate nodded, her eyes narrowing as she took in Salome's form on the bed. "She was conscious. Did she say anything?"

"You know. The usual. I told her she wasn't getting paid until we got her clear of this mess. I think you're right about whatever it is she stole - it's big. She barely batted an eye when I mentioned the diamonds."

Kate's lips pursed, her jaw tight. She took a harsh breath and stepped around him, heading for Lo. "Did she-"

"Kate? Honey, I love you. But get back upstairs and get in the damn bath." He snagged one end of the towel and tugged, pulling her into his chest.

"Are you coming too?" she said, tilting her head to look past him.

"Not right this second. I'll be up after I finish here."

"When you - finish," she said, gripping the banana and setting her jaw. "I can stay here until you do. Eat my banana."

"While you know that's very tempting - watching you eat anything turns me on - you're freezing. You just walked three fucking miles down the beach, not to mention hitching a ride, walking before that, and probably running as well if your feet are any indication. You're going upstairs."

Kate slid her eyes from him to Salome. "I think she's-"

"Beckett," he said, exasperated. "I've got to stitch her wound, and _you_ have to go upstairs before you fucking fall down. Don't be-"

"What?" she growled. "Don't be what? Difficult? Hard to handle? Why are you _handling_ me, Rick?"

His jaw dropped. And then it hit him, and his guts flared hot, lust rolling through his body. "You're jealous. Hot damn. Kate Beckett. You are jealous."

Her eyes snapped back to him. "No. I am not."

He grinned and hooked a finger in the top of her towel, tugged a little to make it gape and fall between them, caught by the closeness of their bodies. "Yeah, love, you are."

"It's not _jealousy,_ " she hissed. "I'm-"

"You're claiming me," he grinned.

She narrowed her eyes and growled something obscene, something _fun_ , but she turned away, yanking the towel up as she flounced off.

He chuckled and went back to the unconscious woman. He would stitch the wound where he could, help the muscles start to knit back together, and then he would go upstairs and prove to his wife that jealousy - possessiveness - could be endearing.

Although, he'd do it _carefully_. She was probably this side of falling unconscious herself.

* * *

"So, this isn't exactly doing as you're told," his voice rumbled.

Kate stood up straighter - that reflexive obedience to a voice that boomed like her father's - and then she threw her banana peel at his face. He laughed and caught it, dropped it on the pile they'd made for compost, and came to her at the kitchen island.

"Hungry?" he murmured.

"Starving," she admitted. "I didn't finish dinner at the restaurant and it's practically morning now."

"I'll make you an omelette after bath, sweetheart." His kiss dropped at the corner of her mouth, nipped at her lip, soothed it where it was split. She shivered, admitting to herself that a bath really did sound like heaven, and his hand cupped the side of her face, tilted her to look at him. "Seriously, though, Kate. Why didn't you get a start on-"

"That crazy harpy could wake up at any moment," she muttered. "She's been all over you. Like an octopus."

He snorted, eyebrows dancing. "Octo-pussy?"

"You're gross."

"Uh-huh."

"She's either in this up to her perfect little neck or she's the _reason_ for all this. And either way, I've never been a fan of women who use their sex for-"

Castle barked a laugh. "Honey, you might want to pause that thought."

"What? Why?"

"Pot, kettle. All that."

She bristled. "I do _not_ use sex to-" At his eyebrow, she flushed and slapped his shoulder. "Only with you. You don't count. You're mine. You like it."

He laughed, his amusement infectious, but the sound bounced around inside her skull rather unpleasantly. She tilted forward and leaned her forehead very carefully against his neck, trying not to move too much while he had his fun.

"I like it very much," he murmured into her hair. "But Salome isn't going anywhere. We have the time to take care of you. Need to take that time, sweetheart. You're important to me."

She sighed and slid her arms around his waist, letting the towel fall where it may. "I know. I will, we will. Bath now, wash all this off me."

"How's your face?"

"Okay," she shrugged. She grunted and closed her one good eye, the other one already closed, swollen still. "Hurts."

He carefully touched her hairline, combed the strands out of her face. "I was gonna make a joke, but I've thought better of it."

"Why let that stop you now?" she muttered. "You usually come right out with it. So lay it on me, super spy."

He chuckled. "Fine. I was gonna say, _does your face hurt? cause it's killing me._ But then I thought better of it."

She groaned and pinched his side, not the scar, she was careful of that. "You're a bully. Take me upstairs to the bath and then make me an omelette."

"Who's the bully now?"

"Shut up. You like it. Hurry. My teeth are starting to chatter and it makes my whole head hurt."

He sighed at her, and she knew he didn't love it, what had happened, that he was actually trying very hard now to be extraordinarily angry only at the world - and not her - but instead of saying anything, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her towards the stairs.

* * *

Beckett groaned and finished the last of the omelette, glad to be hanging out with him on the couch, her body enveloped by his at her back. Castle took the plate out of her hands and leaned just far enough to set it on the floor. She readjusted, letting the feeling of fullness and exhaustion thread through her, settle her. It helped that they'd hashed out a plan.

"Alright," he said, cradling the ice pack at the side of her face. "We're agreed?"

"Agreed," she told him. An hour to sleep, give her body time to adjust, the ice to melt down the bruising, and then they went back in action. "Spitball this interrogation with me, Castle."

"I honestly have no idea how to crack her. If she doesn't want to talk-"

"She has something of value, high value, and she has at least two known entities after her: whoever Ito was hired by, and the cartel."

"Yeah, but cartel only or cartel backed by FARC?"

"It's got to be big, whatever it is," she mumbled. Her eyes wouldn't stay open. She figured that was okay for now. "Hire a guy like Ito, plant him in the CIA-"

Castle flinched under her and her eyes flared open, ready to fight or flight, to have his back. But he only groaned. "If you're right? They planted him and then worked to get him right where they needed him - close to the asset, to Lo who stole whatever she stole. Which means someone in the CIA worked with this entity, this mystery person, whoever it is."

"The CIA," she said slowly. "Are you... sure? It's been over a decade since this program has been in place. Plenty of holes out there, information leaks."

"While that could be true, I don't know how else they'd have known about Salome's connection. And what she took-"

"Maybe it was just knowing she - this permanent cartel hanger-on - had taken it. She stole what? Money or contraband or guns - weapons? - and they have her on video, or process of elimination, they have her, right? So then she runs to her CIA handler for help, and they follow, and she brings it down on him - all the while FARC or cartel have no idea she's CIA."

"We're assuming a lot of stupidity on Lo's part, baby, that I just don't buy."

"So then what?"

"What if she stole something only _after_ Esteban was killed?"

Kate went still, unwilling - entirely - to give Salome the benefit of the doubt, but at the same time, she knew she was being unfairly biased. She just didn't like the woman. "Okay. That could be possible. She stole it after her handler was killed because she knew she'd been made and she needed an escape plan."

"But we agree. Ito killed Esteban. Ito was hired for that purpose - get to Salome. Only our arrival fucked with his plans."

"Yes," she said soberly, awake now. "It was him. I - could see it on his face. His whole demeanor. One thing on the phone and then... he reminded me of Deleware."

"Fuck. To be played twice by professionals is _not_ okay with me."

"You had no way of knowing-"

"Not okay with me," he growled.

She fell silent, fingering the edge of his combat pants, the cargo pocket that she kept tucking her hand into. After her bath with him, Castle had washed her jeans and she'd been able to wear them again. Comfortable once more, especially wearing his worn black t-shirt, especially with the way he took care of her.

She wasn't one for being taken care of. But when he did it - his love was everything.

His grip on the ice shifted and she winced as a fresh press of cold came to her face. She let out a breath and he held up his free hand, thumb cocked. "Number one," he started. "Working on the fact that Ito was hired to get to Salome, what does that tell us?"

"Ito had information," she said promptly. "That killing Esteban _would_ get a replacement in here, down here, and he could follow us back to Salome. Or that killing Esteban would mean that _he_ replaced the man as her handler. Access. Probably the latter."

"Access to Salome through Esteban means access to CIA records. If he killed Esteban, and we're pretty sure he did, then he _knew_ Salome was CIA, and he knew her handler. So _someone_ somewhere fed Ito that information, and he could sit back and wait for us to come to him. So _who?_ "

"What about-" Kate grunted and stopped herself, couldn't believe she'd even been about to mention it. Stupid. A random encounter in DC with a man who hadn't impressed her son? That was beyond ridiculous.

"What about _what_?"

"No, just.. thinking it through. A leak in the CIA is bad for us."

"Yeah," he said grimly. "Which means you and I, sitting here, are not as safe as houses."

She sat up hard, pulling out of his arms and twisting on the couch to look at him. "What?"

"Think about it. Information is getting out. So could-"

She pressed her lips together, shook her head only as far as the bruising would allow. "No, baby, actually-?"

"Actually?"

"This isn't - what you think it is."

Castle blinked. "What?"

"Um, Marjorie kinda let it slip on one of her messages back to me, when I filed the report earlier?"

"What, what?"

"This is their place."

"This is whose place?"

"Theirs. The Director and-"

"No fucking way." Castle glanced fast around the living room and then groaned, jerking on the couch and pulling her upright with him, making her sway on her feet. "Gross. _Gross_. We had sex on their _couch_."

"Twice," she murmured, couldn't help herself.

"Oh, _gross_. I've known him practically my whole life. He's like my dad's best _friend_. This is so gross. What if _they've_ had sex on this couch?"

She giggled, wincing when it echoed weird in her aching jaw. "Yeah, well. The good thing is that the Director and Marjorie don't have this place on the books at all. So no one is going to know. That's why Ito didn't know where we were and had to lure us out."

"Fuck," he muttered, gathering her back to him. "Sorry. You should be off your feet. Your poor feet."

"I'm okay," she promised. But she did let him arrange her back with him on the couch, pulling her cold feet up under her and turning her body into his. "I'm okay. We're okay for now. We have the time."

"Yeah, we do. We do," he murmured, gently pressing the ice against her eye again. "My badass wife. Took on the pro all by herself. Proud of you, baby."

She let herself grin, despite how it cracked the bloodied place on her lip, and he kissed the side of her nose.

"Okay, so we're gonna have to deal with the leak at the CIA after this, but for right now-"

"For right now," she took up. "We're on our own. It's just us."

"We get Salome on her feet and telling us the truth," Castle added.

"We recover whatever she stole-" Kate injected.

"Why? No need to do that. Outside mission parameters. We need to just get the fuck out of here."

"To have something over her, leverage. It might be important. Besides - I'm not sure she'd go without it."

"So we _make_ her go, Kate."

"I know you'd - really like to do that," she said carefully. Her eye throbbed. "But she was mumbling in her sleep - talking as the pain got to her. I'm not sure that whatever she stole wasn't - isn't maybe a _person_ , Castle."

"What?" he growled.

"Ilda. She said 'Ilda' and then - I don't know. I think she's waiting on someone, or she _hid_ someone."

Castle cursed.

She couldn't possibly tell him the rest but she had to; she had to. "I - wonder if - it occurred to me that she might have a daughter."

"A _what_?" he laughed. "No. She does not have offspring, Kate."

"She might."

"Not Salome."

"She might - have your daughter?"

Castle went rigid. And then he had tossed the ice to the floor and dragged her upright, turned her around.

His face was violent. "No. She does _not_ have my daughter. I don't think you understand, Kate. Just _how_ very careful I have always been. More than careful. Careful is what idiot high school boys are. What I am - what I have _been_ \- is a spy. My whole fucking life. No."

She nodded, swallowing fast, realized - shit. Shit.

"No, Kate."

"Okay," she said.

"Not okay. Not _okay_. Say you understand, you get it. Say-"

"I get it," she said quickly. "I understand. Not possible."

He eased, but only minutely. "Not possible is damn right. Not fucking possible."

"Okay," she said again, pressing her hand to his chest. "Okay. Let me - lie back down before my head splits open."

He growled because he must know she was saying it to distract him - but he leaned over and picked up the ice again, cradled her against his chest. "We're agreed, right? On what has to happen next with her?"

Their interrogation. "Yes. Agreed. We're agreed."

"You know what to do?"

"I know what to do," she promised. She didn't like it, but she knew what she had to do.


	7. Chapter 7

**Close Encounters 30**

* * *

Beckett had initially protested to this part of the plan, but she saw the wisdom of her being in the room - psychologically speaking. But she hadn't really wanted to _watch_ as her husband played his old role with the woman.

She had once brought up the idea, long ago, back when she thought this was the kind of thing a spy did regularly, threesomes, and he had been both offended and intensely furious at the idea of sharing her.

And now she was pushed right to the edge of that same brittle fury at the idea of sharing _him_. Even with a woman who had no claim and no chance for it. Salome had that catlike closed-mouthed serenity that always got to Kate, but all Kate could do was perch delicately on the edge of the dresser and wait for Castle to get the show on the road.

Castle went with English, standing over Salome who was still crouched at the foot of the bed. The looming was hot, Beckett had to admit it, but Salome ignored him.

Castle said nothing.

They were in a power struggle, silent and unspeaking, and Castle had warned her it would go down like this. She knew what he had to do.

So she crossed her arms over her chest, kept the wince off her face as the bruise on her sternum stung. "I have no dog in this fight, so I'll start. Lo?" Salome gave her a barely civil look. Beckett pretended that got to her - and maybe it did. "Kind of a stupid code name to give yourself. It sounds like nothing more than a nickname. I bet half the men you sleep with like to call you Lo."

Salome's eyes slanted towards her. "And more than half of the women." Beckett didn't respond, and Salome tossed a glare Castle's way, her demeanor changing like quicksilver. "Tell that to the stud. He's the one who gave me the name. After we slept together. So."

"There was no sleeping," Castle put in mildly. Only Kate heard the tic in his voice. The burr of his irritation. "I'd never in a million years close my eyes on you."

"Probably a good idea," Salome smirked. They smirked together.

"Either way," Kate interrupted. "Lo. You're in a tight spot. You've got a couple different groups after you."

"I had noticed," Salome said archly. "Not sure what you want me to do about it. Kind of - what do you say? - tied up here."

"For your own protection," Castle inserted. Smirking again. There was something entirely dead in his eyes that made the hair stand up on Kate's arms.

Salome just snarled at him. " _My_ protection."

Kate rolled her eyes - fuck, that really hurt. Mental note: keep the sarcasm to a minimum. "Just as he won't close his eyes on you, I won't leave you free to roam the safe house."

"Is this an agency safe house?" Salome hissed, shifting upright. "No. No, I _cannot_ stay here. We can't. They will be on us in moments."

"It's not a CIA safe house," Beckett said. "We know better than that." They hadn't, but they had to play to their damn strengths here, and lying was always a part of it.

Salome slumped back with real relief, a flick of her eyes to Castle. "She is your mouthpiece this time, yes? She has you by the balls." Her gaze slid to Kate. "You play nicely with them, you hear?"

"I'm not interested in nice," Beckett said. "And neither is he. What am I interested in is us getting out of here in one piece."

Salome slid a glance Castle's direction, but he was nodding at Beckett, crossing his arms over his chest, all part of their careful play. "Personally," he said, "I don't care how many pieces she's in. So long as she doesn't go spilling our secrets."

"Well, fuck you too," Salome growled. She shot Beckett a wild look. "You think this too, yes? Pieces spread around the country-"

"I don't particularly care." Beckett shook her head. "I'm here to do my job. Exfiltration. But whatever scheme you have going on - there isn't any room for it. It's done, it's over. We're only talking right now because we have to get out of here without alerting the whole damn region. So how far does this go, Salome? How much did you steal and which group is after you?"

The woman shut her mouth and turned her head, clear indications she wasn't talking.

Castle glanced to Kate. She nodded.

Beckett sat up straight, pushing off the dresser. "Alright. Fine. Pieces it is. Come on, Castle." She headed for the door and Castle came with her, and they had taken only two steps out into the hallway when Salome snarled.

"Which group?" the woman called after them. "All of them. And it's not just FARC and the cartel. It's your own fucking CIA. You're part of this and you just don't know it."

* * *

Castle saw the change in her, saw it immediately.

He didn't know _what_ the change was, only that it had happened. He knew the why - he and Beckett had threatened to leave her on her own, to choose the expedient route and kill Salome rather than deal with the obstacles. Which Salome believed him capable of.

That was the why. But the what.

What game was Salome playing now, what was she trying to pull over them?

Salome had oriented to Kate when they'd come back into the room, her whole body softening, her face liquid with - something. Castle wasn't happy with how difficult he was finding this, reading the woman. He used to be dead on.

Now feelings crowded into the scene.

"Lo," Kate started. She had changed too, softened imperceptibly to match Salome's demeanor. He'd seen her do it with a hundred suspects while working with the NYPD, and he'd seen her do it with their assets or contacts in the field. It was part of her skill set, the interrogation, but he didn't think mirroring was the best approach with Lo.

Not when Lo was certainly faking it. Adopting a position of humility to gain sympathy. To work an angle.

"Castle."

He glanced at his wife and she lifted an eyebrow.

Right. His turn. "Salome, you ready to talk to us or are you blowing smoke?"

"I'm talking. I talk. Didn't you _hear_ me?"

"I heard a bunch of shit about how you have to get back to your hidey hole. You have to stay here. There are things left to do. Guess what? Ain't happening."

Salome turned a desperate look back to Beckett. "You understand. You see, don't you? You can see what - I'm trying to do. What I have to do for-" Salome stopped herself, glanced away.

Kate's face changed, and Castle remembered what she'd said to him about a girl. A little girl. Ilda.

No.

He knew with every fiber in his being that Ilda wasn't real, that Salome was playing her game.

"What you have to do," Kate said quietly. Question in her voice that almost wasn't a question.

Salome leaned in, hands pressed between her thighs, her eyes intent on Kate. It made Castle almost breathless, the feeling of hypnotic power in the room. Salome curled her fingers at the top of the bandage above her knee, dug in so that her face crumpled with pain. "I have to - get back to her. She needs me."

"No," Castle said, straightening up. Horror trickled like ice water in his guts, witnessing her play his wife. "No. Who told you?"

Kate turned back to him, startled, her eyes wild with _shut up, no, I got this_.

"Who told you about us?" Castle growled, leaning forward and taking Salome by the upper arm, gripping her hard. "You _tell_ me the truth."

Salome's face closed down.

"You don't have a fucking daughter," Castle said. Kept his voice steady, cold. He felt anything other than steady; someone in the CIA had told Salome that the best way to get to them was through their son. _Invent a shared history_ , that was in the fucking handbook.

"Castle," Kate hissed.

"There is no girl. You're running a con, Lo, and you should know me better than that. I don't play your games, bitch."

Salome bared her teeth at him and tried to jerk out of his grip. Kate was at his side then, a touch to the back of his arm to settle him, but she hadn't seen it; she didn't know.

Castle turned a bleak look to his wife, nodded to Salome. "She knows. Us. Someone told her."

Kate flinched.

"Perhaps I am just a good guesser," Salome said slyly. A look between them. "And the girl is-"

"Don't _even_ ," Castle replied nastily. "Next you're going to say she's mine. And you want only to set her free. The cartel is holding her to make you do this. You must have come up with that story on the fly, because your execution was flawed."

Suddenly Kate's fingers gripped his elbow as she figured it out. "Wait. She knows about _us_ ," she hissed. "H-him."

James. "Yes," he cut out. "Inventing a child. Because someone fucking told her how to play us."

Salome's eyes slid away, came back with a flick of speculation, the fire of a new plan. "You want to get home to your beautiful boy. I understand that, that is all I am trying to say. All I am trying to do-"

"Who the _fuck_ told you?" Castle snapped.

Salome's lips pressed into a pleased smile and it made Castle even more furious - how she'd gotten to him despite everything, made him reveal his true nature, all because she'd pressed the button of his family.

Beckett tugged on his elbow, pulled him away from Salome. She herded him towards the door and they stood half in and half out, her hand only on his elbow, but her eyes troubled.

"I think I - might have an idea."

"Of - _who_?" He glanced to the bed where the woman was straining to overhear them.

"Ravi," Kate breathed.

Salome went very very still.

"No," Castle gaped, turned a bewildered look to Kate. Ravi. Standing in the lobby with them, talking about their son, cooing over him. "No. How-"

"Echo acted - weird about him. He's never done that with anyone-"

"Kate," he said, exasperated. Horrified.

She shook her head. "We don't talk about it, Castle, and I get it. We don't talk about it. What he can... but I won't dismiss it."

"I'm not saying - look, that's another conversation entirely. Put that aside for now. Echo has no place here."

"That is _not_ acceptable, Castle." She pinched the back of his elbow. "Ravi-"

"Shelve Ravi."

"But he-"

"Not in front of her," Castle warned his wife. "She knows, yes, and someone told her. Someone will fucking pay for that. But right now, Kate, we cannot be speculating in front of a woman who has no moral scruples. She will twist every damn word around, and then she will take that information and sell it to the highest bidder."

Kate stiffened. Her eyes detached from his and slid to Salome. "Sell it to the highest bidder?"

He saw the reaction it got, saw Salome's lips press every so slightly together. Must be the wound in her knee, making her tells so obvious.

"Salome. What did you steal?" he said.

He moved to confront her, but his wife whipped around him, stood in front of Salome and leaned in, pressed her thumb into the bandage above Lo's knee. Salome screamed, jerking back, but the handcuffs kept her there.

Before Castle could stop her, Kate had pushed her thumb into the hole he had just sutured back together, her face hard as ice. "Who told you about my _son_?"

"A man in DC," Salome gasped. "Man, man in DC. Oh, God. Please. There was no name. Only code. That's all. He was - information only."

"What is it then?" Kate growled.

Castle reached out - finally shaking himself free of his shock - and caught the back of Kate's jeans. But he didn't stop her.

Kate pressed on. "What could you possibly have stolen that has a man in DC selling out to you? That has the CIA, FARC, and the cartel all after you?"

Finally, Castle tugged. Kate ignored him, her thumb blanched white at the knuckle where she was digging into Salome's wound.

Lo squirmed hard, sweat breaking out on her forehead, but she gave it up with a whine of pain. "It's - military tech. Fuck. I stole a damn pixel."

Castle froze. He knew that word. He _knew_ -

"Pixel?" Kate said, confusion lacing her voice.

"Where the fuck did you get a pixel?" Castle hissed.

Lo's eyes darted to his, her face bleached of color, pain buffeting her eyes. "FARC. Knew of a man wanting to sell and I - intercepted him. I stole the pixel."

"What the hell is a pixel?" Kate said, rounding now on him.

Salome, now released, slumped back to the mattress, panting hard, fighting to stay conscious.

Castle winced. "ADAPTIV technology. It's a cloaking device. One pixel is just one cell of the whole. Together..."

"A _cloaking_ device?" Kate glanced back to Salome as if in confirmation, but Castle saw Lo's lips thin.

He sighed and rubbed a hand down his face. "The US is the only country in the world with this technology, and I can guarantee you that the CIA will kill to keep it that way."

"So now we're running from the CIA as well."

His jaw worked. "Looks like it."


	8. Chapter 8

**Close Encounters 30**

* * *

They couldn't leave for another hour, chafing at the time lost, but it was necessary to be as thorough as possible. Plan, plan, plan. Castle never did anything without one.

Beckett was still livid over the CIA leak. She had tried talking to Castle about it, but he had shut her down repeatedly; he didn't trust Salome's listening ears.

She was having bad thoughts about Marjorie and the Director, really bad thoughts about how Marjorie had insisted on their bringing James to see her, how Castle had said the woman did the Director's dirty work.

"Becks?" Castle caught her elbow. "Take this. Be ready for me."

She took the pack from him, shouldering it though she knew he had repacked their bags to make hers lighter. She didn't comment, because she knew she wasn't in a good place physically to take a heavier load, and because Salome was watching them.

"I'm headed out," Castle told her quietly. "Get us some wheels."

"I'll be fine," Kate reassured him. They had handcuffed Salome's wrists in front of her so she could walk, but they had hobbled her by the ankles, unwilling to give her too long a leash. Just in case. "First car you come across, Castle."

"I don't want to burn the Director's house," he said.

"I don't fucking care about the Director's vacation hideaway," she snarled. "If it has to be burned to get us out of here together and in one piece-"

"No, you're right," he said, chastened. He dipped his head and kissed her on the mouth, right in front of Salome, and though her lip split again, and her skull still pounded, she felt warmth cascading through her body.

"Love you," she whispered at his mouth, hiding her words from the rest of the world. From Lo.

"Same," he said, stepping away. He already had his pack on his back, and he turned quickly, hustled out of the villa towards the court yard - and the big double doors that led to the front walk.

Kate watched him go, and then she turned back to Salome, their prisoner on the couch, and she sank back against the wall, the pack making a cushion for her aching hips. She was afraid that if she sat down, she might not get back up again.

Salome watched her, studying her, and Kate saw an opportunity.

"You might want to start talking," she told Salome. "This place you're taking us." At the scoffing look Salome threw her way, Kate continued. "I know you won't say where. But. How'd you choose it? Why there, why don't you have the pixel on you?"

"Keep something like that on me and I'd be dead."

"Protection," Kate answered. "So they'll keep you alive long enough to take them to it." She narrowed her eyes at Lo, thinking.

Salome only gave her a crude gesture in return. " _You_ haven't killed me yet, have you?"

"Not yet," Kate said acidly.

Salome turned her head away.

"But why," Kate insisted. "Why that route? Why do it in the first place?"

"It's my ticket out of this place," Salome said, shrugging.

Kate wasn't sure she believed the woman. But it was what Lo wanted them to think of her, and more than that, Kate had _heard_ her mumbling in her sleep, talking about Ilda. Something else was going on, and Salome had tried to turn it into a trigger point, but the fact remained: Ilda was part of this, whoever or _what_ ever she was.

"Did you steal the pixel before or after Esteban was murdered?" Kate said quietly.

Salome's face showed nothing, but Kate could tell she had hit on the crux of things. The order in which this had all happened was important to the motive here, and if Salome had seen her world falling in around her, and had only _then_ stolen the pixel, that was different from being the sole cause of getting herself burned.

"Did you know his replacement agent was a professional working for the cartel?"

Salome gave a half shrug and eased back against the couch. Her face was still held the pallor of pain and blood loss, but she had slept while Kate and Castle had planned, and she seemed more able than she had all night.

The sun should have risen fifteen minutes ago, but the rainstorm had left permanent grey clouds in the sky, obscuring the light. Kate watched the patter of drops on the back sliding glass door and tried to marshal her thoughts.

First, and most important, whoever had told Salome about their son had only been giving out information to aid the woman, not to actually hurt James. And in that effort, it wasn't even to hurt her and Castle, but to assist Salome in escaping the people who were after her.

It smacked of something she and Castle would do. Use information to set the stage exactly how they needed it for the grand finale. Give out pieces of the story so that people would fall in line, see them in a specific light, give them the best start.

"I don't know all the players involved," Salome said slowly. "You must see that is the truth. Yes, I have had my fun, I do love fun. But a girl has to have information, contacts, assets of her own in this business. Surely you do not rely on _him_ to protect you from all sides?"

"No, of course not," she lied smoothly. Ha. She definitely relied on Castle. "I understand you. But you have to understand that you've used my _son_ to further your own interests. Do you think I take that lightly?"

Salome said nothing.

Kate checked her phone. No text from Castle. She had maybe only fifteen more minutes. "Do you think _he_ takes it lightly? I can assure you that whatever it is I've done to hurt you, to make you wary, just wait until Castle gets his hands on you."

"Castle," Salome purred, giving Kate an arch look. "Such interesting names you have for each other. And little - Echo? Echo of his father-"

"Won't work," Kate said easily, though it _was_ working. Enough that she had to will her heart rate to settle. "You know Castle. He was your handler for a decade. You think he'd partner with me if mere sentiment and cheap tricks worked on me?"

Salome's face was entirely blank.

"You stay helpful to us, Lo," she finished, "and you'll survive this. I can promise you that. But you stop being helpful, and I can't promise I won't kill you myself." She turned a hard look to the woman, knowing her bruised face looked serious. "So don't fucking touch my husband."

Salome's jaw went slack.

Ah, so _that_ the woman hadn't known. What exactly had she thought? That El Maquina couldn't possibly have fathered a child on purpose, and now he dragged his baby mama around the world doing softcore missions?

Apparently so. Well.

Kate nodded, resisted the urge to reach up and touch her half-swollen eye socket. It burned again, though Castle had told her to leave the ice on it. She should. She ought to.

"Esteban was murdered only after I took the pixel," Salome said roughly. "I had intended to give it over to him. That, of course, never happened. So I hid it instead."

* * *

Castle braked to a stop in the pouring rain, the gravel of the drive pinging off the undercarriage of the Jeep. He hopped out and jogged up to the front doors, but Kate was already coming out, leading Salome behind her as if on a leash.

Oh, well. She was.

He lifted an eyebrow and nudged Kate aside, swung Salome up onto his shoulder. The woman grunted in pain, kicked out, but Castle slapped the back of her thigh just above the wound. "Stop fucking around, Lo. We're doing what you want."

Salome growled but he tossed her over the side of the Jeep and into the back, leaving her to get herself situated. He turned back to Kate and she was giving _him_ that same eyebrow.

He shrugged. "What, baby?"

"Nothing." She swiped a hand through her hair, came up short when she hit the pony tail holder that was keeping it in a bun. The rain drizzled over her cheeks and made her eyelashes clump together.

"Your poor face," he murmured. He touched lightly at her cheek where the skin was scraped and she hissed, pulling back. "Sorry, sweetheart. You ready?"

"Ready or not, they'll be coming after us," Kate muttered. But she nodded and gave him her backpack, and he took it from her and followed her to the Jeep.

Salome had managed to sit upright under the tarped roof of the Jeep, keeping away from the open windows on either side and the rain that drifted inside. Castle slung the backpack onto the roll bar and made it secure with the other one, grateful for their weather-proofing.

And that Salome couldn't reach them.

He'd carried the diamonds himself, but he still wasn't sure they would be giving Salome those any time soon. If at all.

She didn't really deserve them.

Kate crawled into the front seat and Castle got behind the wheel. She touched his thigh. "Change the registration plates?"

"Yeah, course."

"Where?"

"About nine vacation homes down," he said.

She frowned, swiped rainwater out of her good eye.

"Don't," he told her. "I'm getting you out of here-"

"Us."

"Us out of here," he amended. He put the Jeep in gear and churned gravel going in reverse, backed out of the driveway. "I don't care who gets burned anymore."

 _I care about you._ But he wouldn't say that with Salome in the back seat; he could only give Kate a long look and then he pushed the Jeep to the end of the drive. He slammed it back into gear and the car rocketed forward, and Kate clutched the center console.

"Sorry," he murmured, lifting his hand from the gearshift to wrap around her wrist. She squeezed his fingers in response and he put both hands on the wheel, lifted his voice above the spatter of rain. "Lo. Want to tell me where we're going?"

"Take the road back into town."

"We can't go back into town," Kate said quickly. "It's crawling with police looking for me-"

"We won't be going back into town," Salome said. "We'll take another road."

"Which one?"

Salome said nothing.

Kate touched his thigh again, indicating he should go with it. She looked bad, fuck. She looked really bad, but at least she was alert. She wasn't exhausted and struggling - she was just banged up. He didn't love it, but they could both live with it.

"She's keeping herself alive," Kate murmured. "Let it happen for now. We have a plan."

He nodded. They did. The plan was still in place.

He took the road into town and waited for Salome to tell them what to do next.

* * *

Salome guided them away from town on the east loop of the highway, as if they would take 90 to Naranjas. But instead, Salome had them get off at the exit for Barrio El Rodeo, bypassing the Texaco gas station and a bleak Save market to head for a collection of condemned warehouses.

"We're heading back into town," Castle snapped.

"Just a little," the woman said.

"The barrio," Kate said tersely.

"It's in the middle of revitalization, no?" Salome smirked, looking far more capable than Kate liked.

"The university is near here," Castle said, a furrow in his brow. Sena Ternera, if she was remembering the map right. "Where-"

"End of the street," she directed. She was hanging onto the back of Castle's seat with her bound hands, and Kate could imagine, all too easily, how the woman could lift up and loop the cuffs around Castle's neck.

"Castle," she said tightly, a jerk of her chin back to Salome.

He sat forward, growling. "Lo. Get the fuck back in the seat."

Salome huffed, pouting at him but giving Kate an evil look. Kate really wanted to give the woman a big _fuck you_ but that would be petty.

Castle drove the Jeep down the lonely stretch of pitted pavement until they reached a five-story warehouse at the end of the street. It looked like a construction site, yellow caution tape flapping in the wind, the dark storm clouds building up behind the grimy building. Five floors of broken-out windows, boards pried loose, and walls crumbling. A metal silo stood out front, the door empty at the top and the chute fallen down.

Not a construction site. A condemned site. The place had a chain like fence around it with a bright notice: _Cuidado: Condenado._

Heavy hydraulics had been parked near the warehouse. A big Cat Caterpillar sat on one side of the fence, an excavator waiting on this side, while a John Deere bulldozer had amassed a pile of loose debris into a mountain.

Salome nodded to that mountain of debris. "Up there, up debris mountain, over the fence," she said.

Kate frowned. "You're coming with us."

"Bitch-"

Without heat, complete ice in his voice, Castle said, "Shut your fucking mouth." He cast a level look at Salome, and even Kate felt a chill crawl up her spine at his tone. How easily he fell back into that former role, El Maquina.

Salome rolled her eyes. "I can hardly get out of the Jeep, let alone climb-"

"You're going with us," Castle said. Hard. No arguments.

Kate gingerly put a hand on the door and popped it open, felt the echo in her skull where things seemed to shift every time she moved. She sucked it up and slid out of the Jeep, met Castle around at the front.

He was looking at Salome. "Come on. You can do it. Takes more than a little flesh wound to stop you."

Kate didn't much like the tint of pride in his voice - or was that knowing? - but his hand came to her waist and hooked through the belt loop of her jeans. Claiming her.

And she liked that.

They watched as Salome slowly lifted her cuffed hands, and then her good leg. She grunted and fell back to the seat, fumbled with her torn black jeans as if suddenly caught by a fit of modesty.

"I guess I could have found her some clothes to wear," Kate said.

"It's summer in Colombia. She's not going to freeze, even if it does start raining again."

"Jeans at least."

"A pair of yours? Her ass wouldn't fit."

Kate's lips twitched. "You like my ass better."

"Yes, I do, very much so." And as if to prove it, he slapped her ass and gripped it, making her laugh and come up on her toes.

"Baby," she murmured. "Maybe you should help her. I don't think she _can_ do it."

"Don't you fucking dare," Salome snarked. She hooked her cuffed hands at the roll bar and hoisted her ass up to the door of the Jeep, rocked precariously backward.

"Yeah, you're gonna have to-"

Too late.

Salome toppled out of the Jeep and towards the ground, but Castle was faster. He jerked forward and caught the woman against the door, making her groan in pain, her leg jostled by the sudden stop.

Castle set her on her feet, leaning her back against the Jeep, and then he completely stepped away.

Kate held out her hand for him, and he took it, squeezing. She felt better, her head not quite so heavy on her neck, her jaw no longer throbbing, and all because of his touch.

"Let's go. Up the debris mountain, ladies." He released her hand but only to touch lightly at her cheek, his eyes tender. "You got this, baby."

"Of course I do," she huffed. "More than she does."

Castle's lips quirked. Was he laughing at her?

"Shut up, Castle. I can climb a stupid hill."

"Debris mountain."

She rolled her eyes, but damn, that hurt. Really hurt. She would take debris mountain carefully, that was for sure.


	9. Chapter 9

**Close Encounters 30**

* * *

After Castle had driven the Jeep off-road a few hundred yards and parked it behind one of the construction dumpsters, he jogged back to them as they stood before the fence.

"Let's go," he said, nodding to Kate.

She immediately started up the ten-foot pile of debris, using her hands to keep her balance, finding good footholds as she went.

Castle had to help Salome climb.

The debris was mostly ground into dust and rock no bigger than two of his fists, but there were still portions which were precarious. Looked like the excavator had chopped up most of it, and then the construction crew had come along behind and dumped a few more things onto the pile - rotting wooden beams, chunks of concrete, broken glass.

The glass worried him. A simple slip down the side could mean serious damage if either of them caught it just wrong, and while his blood was fortified at the moment, a deep wound like that couldn't be healed in time. Kate, unsteady and in pain, was making the climb on sheer fortitude and competitive spirit, and while it made his chest swell with pride, among other things, he also wished to hell she'd wait for them in the Jeep.

She wouldn't. Not if it meant leaving him unprotected, and it _would_ since he had to be so hands-on with Salome, hauling her up the debris and keeping her balanced. Someone had to have a ready weapon trained on the woman.

Once at the top, it was simply a matter of maneuvering around the razor wire at the broken portion of the chain link fence, and then through the gap the debris had made. Kate went first, moving in that careful way that spoke of a bruised jaw and a pounding headache, but her balance was perfect and she held a portion of the fence back for them.

Salome went next, and of course she sliced her arm on razor wire, the cut going deep, but the woman was nothing if not fierce, and she said not a word, powered through it. And damn, yeah, it impressed him, had always impressed him, but he kept it off his face for the sake of his wife.

Kate had enough to deal with right now, didn't need to be worried about his purely professional admiration.

Admiration was too strong of a word, really.

When Castle had slinked through the fence and started down the other side, he held out his hand to Kate. "I'll take the lead. Lo, you're behind me. Becks-"

"I have your back," she said, nodding carefully.

He hoped everything was in his eyes, his trust in her, how he depended on _her_ and only her. Jealousy was cute, sweet even, and when they did finally find a stolen moment, the sex was going to be hot. But he wanted her absolutely with him right now, one hundred percent confident.

"Go," she said softly.

He turned back to the downward slope of the debris, and he began to carefully pick out his descent. Salome put a hand on his back, dangerously low, but it couldn't be helped. She would fall and break her fucking neck without help, and they all knew it.

With Lo's fist in his shirt and her breathing heavy and labored at his back, Castle began to slowly make his way down the side.

Ahead of them, the dark clouds broke just enough for the rising sun to turn the warehouse yard into a bleak wash of dirt and broken pieces, the graveyard of mechanical ghosts.

* * *

Okay, Kate might be a little bit out of her depth here.

She had her weapon holstered at her hip and the knives in their sheath around her thigh, but she also had the worst fucking headache she'd ever had in her whole life. Now that the numbing effects of the ice had worn off, her face was hot and swollen, her eye was beginning to close up again, and no, no, the regimen wasn't doing shit for her, scratches or remnants or whatever.

At least Castle was soldiering on. Doing the damn job - for both of them.

She wasn't so bad that she couldn't walk, oh no, she felt every fucking step as it jarred through her skull, but she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to make it back up that debris mountain to the other side of the Jeep again. And if she felt this badly, then she didn't want to think about Salome, and the chunk of muscle that had been torn through just above her knee. Woman had to be in some severe pain.

But if Salome could do it, then so could Kate.

For the moment, Castle was working at the padlock that barred the doors of the condemned warehouse, and Beckett had the chance to lean a shoulder against one of the crumbling concrete support pillars that fronted the building. Salome was slumped against the wall, and Kate kept her in her sights while Castle had his back to them. He'd found a length of rebar, smashed the concrete off one end where it had still clung, and now he was beating at the rusty chains that looped the handles together.

Rusty, but still metal.

"Castle," she called during a pause in his swing. "Castle, try prying the handles from the door instead. Joints are probably weaker than the chain."

He gave her a narrow look, and then a curl of that chagrined smile. "Yeah, I know." He turned back to the door and pushed the rebar through one of the ends of the simple C-curve handles, and then used the leverage of the metal to pry it off. The screws shrieked as they came free, but the handle popped off and swung free, dangling from the end of the chain.

He knew? Had he been giving them a chance to _rest?_

Whatever.

"After you," she told Salome. "You're our guide."

The woman struggled up from the wall just as the clouds moved back over the sun, dropping the warehouse yard in stark grey and faint blue. A smattering of rain peppered their faces, and Salome hurried inside the building, best as she could, limping badly.

"Un-ass this," Castle told her.

"I will. You," Kate gestured to the woman.

He nodded and went forward, took Salome by the upper arm to help prop her up. The leg wasn't bleeding, it didn't look like, but Kate wasn't sure how much more damage they were doing to her muscle by making her walk on it.

She didn't entirely care, but she wasn't heartless. Salome was a marked woman, and she would need her wits to survive past today, even with the diamonds making up the difference. The cartel's arm had a long reach, and maybe she could disappear in Europe, Spain or one of the smaller countries.

Castle tossed her a look and she realized she had wound down to nothing, standing her staring outside. She pressed the handle back into the door, using her thumb to shove the screws back into their holes, the chain tight and making the work difficult. When she had pulled the door shut behind them, she heard the handle rattle but it didn't fall, which would keep it from looking like someone was inside.

Kate turned back around and caught up to them, taking note of the dim interior. The wide open floor held long rows of stories-high metal shelves with disintegrating packing crates. Every fifty yards or so was a steel support beam that reached the corrugated metal roof, but half of those looked bowed. Beyond the metal shelves looked to be sets of three bare bones staircases that led to catwalks above, the second story housing offices with sheer glass walls.

And of course, Salome was leading them to the center, rickety-as-fuck staircase. Of course.

Castle kept the woman moving slightly ahead of him and Kate took up the rear as they moved between the massive shelving units. They reminded her of the shelves in Archives down in the basement of the Twelfth Precinct, but at least twice the height. The width of them was massive as well, spanning the height of an average man, with crates stacked double. She read the labels as she passed, trying to interpret a high school and spy world Spanish into what had to be mechanical parts for specialty equipment. Turbines?

At the end of the aisle, the center staircase spiraled up to the second floor catwalk, one of three total staircases. She liked to have multiple modes of egress, but she didn't like the long distances between them, since the catwalk ran the whole length of the warehouse. It was obvious that, at one point, this had been a wealthy company with many managers and office personnel, and that the floor workers had been given rooms on the lower level, below the offices, for breaks and recreation and lockers.

"You first," Castle told Salome.

The woman didn't hesitate in beginning the climb, though her feet fumbled on the spiral steps, the narrow places too narrow, and the wide places too wide. Kate watched Castle catch Salome, hands basically at her ass since that was the - um, handiest? - part of her, but other than a hot flare in her guts, Kate dismissed it. Had to be done.

Had to get the injured woman up the damn staircase.

A few of the steps were so rusty that Castle's foot went right through them, though Lo's did not, his heavier tread combining to make those places weak. After the fifth or so step had done that, Castle stopped and turned around, drew Kate ahead of him.

"You're getting the hardest climb, all those gaps where my foot has gone through. At least this way I can grab you before you go."

"What about you?" she said, but she didn't try to push and jostle him back ahead of her. Too risky on this precarious climb.

"I'm arguably far more able to handle myself than either of you are right now."

She flashed him a look for that, but he was grinning up at her from a few steps below, cheeky and cute and so attractive that she had a hard time fighting the urge to wrap her body around his. Height differences were always fun with him. But instead she turned back around and resumed the climb, following Salome's slow, painstaking steps upward.

And now that Kate was in the middle of their caravan, she realized she was smelling muddy clay and machinery grease and - peculiarly - pine tar. It tickled something in the back of her throat, some kind of memory, but she couldn't quite get at it.

Her head was killing her.

* * *

Castle had a bad feeling about this place.

Not just because his wife looked like she was losing whatever edge she'd been relying on to keep her going, but also because the warehouse had a strangely _used_ quality to it that he couldn't place. Plenty of grime and dust, but the main floor had massive tracks through it, smear lines from what he assumed was heavy equipment. The main pillars had been out of their line of sight, masked by the range of huge shelves, but those that he could see had been severely damaged.

It wasn't safe, that was for damn sure. Place was falling down around them.

"Anyone read those signs out front?" Kate said suddenly. They were nearing the top of the spiral staircase, going much more slowly than he liked because of Salome's injury.

"What-"

"In Spanish," Kate said, turning on the stairs.

"Keep going, Becks," he prompted, not wanting to stop now. "Why are you asking?"

"I don't know enough construction-specific words but _Caution_ was all over those signs."

"It's a condemned building," he answered her, nudging her ass to keep her going. She was using one hand on the railing to haul herself up, but when he looked past her to Salome, he saw the woman's studied nonchalance. And that pricked his curiosity. "Actually, I didn't read the signs that carefully. But Lo. You did. What is it?"

"Condemned building," Lo answered, shrugging. Or attempting to, but she was on her hands and knees now trying to navigate the collapsed portion at the top of the stairs. When she had pulled herself up to the catwalk and turned, Castle had a flash of revelation and jerked forward.

He caught Salome's foot in his shoulder a second before she would have connected with Beckett's jaw. "You fucking bitch," he growled, driving Salome backwards. She toppled, grunting as her ass hit the floor of the catwalk. "No more fucking around."

"You wouldn't respect me if I didn't try," Lo said, arching one dark eyebrow even. But then she crawled to the metal railing and tried to stand on her feet.

"I'd have respected you a lot fucking more if you just _did what I said_ like a normal fucking person. You forget, Lo. You're not an agent. You're an asset." He turned his back on her - she could barely get to her feet - and he reached for Kate, drew her bodily towards him and planted her on the catwalk above them.

"You saw that coming," she murmured.

"Yeah, baby, I did," he whispered.

"I didn't," she said, tilting her head and closing her eyes. One side of her face was swollen again, puffy, and it had to hurt.

"I don't blame you, Beckett. You're a little off your game right now." He maneuvered the last of the collapsed steps and climbed onto the catwalk himself.

"There was something..." she muttered, eyes closing again. She looked like she was summoning information from some great depth. "We were on to something. She did it to distract us. Not to escape - she can't escape - where would she go? So there was something-"

"Demolition," he supplied, everything clicking now in his head. "Fucking hell. It's condemned. And it's slated for demolition."

"Today?" Kate croaked, swaying on her feet.

Castle turned grimly to Salome, reached out and grabbed her by the arm, hauling her upwards so fast she gasped, lurching on a leg that wouldn't support her. "When is demolition? What time, damn it?"

"How the fuck am I supposed to know-"

"Of course you know. And there were signs posted, weren't there? This is your hiding place; you fucking _know_ -"

"Early," Kate murmured behind him. "Five? Was it five or six in the morning-"

"It's six," Salome said, sighing heavily. "Are you happy? Demolition at six today."

" _Today-"_

"So if we want to get this thing, we need to get moving."

"If I'd fucking _known_ this place was going down, we'd never have come," he told her. Salome would never have made it this far without their help; she had needed them to _get_ her here. Needed them. And now-

"Not six," Kate interrupted, gripping his sleeve. "Not six. She's lying. It must be a whole fucking lot sooner than that."

At just that moment, the rumbling that he thought had been thunder began to amass outside the warehouse, like a storm front had settled directly behind them.

But it wasn't a damn storm front.

It was the demolition crew.

"Ah, fuck. It's now."


	10. Chapter 10

**Close Encounters 30**

* * *

Beckett froze. Her ears picked up the sounds of trucks pulling into the lot on the other side of the chain link fence, the roar of engines as the heavy machines were turned on.

Demolition day.

"It's only a wrecking ball," Salome inserted. She was standing again, her hands gripping the metal railing of the catwalk for balance. "We have some time. They'll smash it in, but the infrastructure will hold longer than you think."

"I didn't see a wrecking ball out there," Kate said, urgency rising up in her. "There was no wrecking ball outside."

"A rental, something," Salome shrugged. "Doesn't matter. I have to get that pixel." She began to lurch down the catwalk.

Castle growled at her stop and turned back to Kate. "I'll take a look outside and see how far along they are in the process. We can gauge our time."

But she was still frozen, her heart unwilling to catch. "Pitch and clay," she husked. She'd been smelling it since they'd forced their way inside. "Not a wrecking ball, Castle. It's C4," Kate gasped. "Oh, _fuck_ , they're doing a controlled demolition."

Salome's face went white. "No. No, it was slated for-"

Castle, who was farthest from Kate on the catwalk so that he could see out the one, high window at the top of the roofline, began to backpedal. "Oh, fuck. It's not a wrecking ball. We have to go!"

Salome took off at a run, darting around the corner of the t-junction and flying towards the offices. _Much_ more able than she'd let on, and now yards away from them and disappearing fast.

Horrified, Kate darted off after her, taking that same corner at a good clip and gaining despite the throbbing in her skull and the shaking sway of the unstable catwalk.

She could _not_ let Salome escape here with that pixel.

"Beckett!" Castle roared behind her. She could hear him making chase. But his heavier tread and the combined weight of all three of them rattling the catwalk made it groan ominously, the screech of screws losing their grip.

Salome was rushing for the farthest set of offices, two junctions down from where Beckett was, but when Kate heard the steel beginning to buckle, she halted, half-turned back to check on Castle. The metal frame of the catwalk that connected the center stairs to the main section had already pitched steeply forward. Even as she watched, steel bolts ripped free of the overhead concrete and crashed to the metal at his feet before bouncing and falling to the ground below.

Far, far below.

And the catwalk was going down with it.

"Castle!" she yelled, jerking back to him.

"No!" He held up both hands to stop her, but he had to clutch the railing. "Don't you fucking dare. _Move_ , Beckett. Forward. Get off this thing."

Her heart stopped. "Castle-"

" _Go."_ One end of the catwalk came loose from the t-junction, yawing, and it created an ever-widening seam between her and him.

"Go back down the stairs," she yelled, backing up slowly, moving for the next set of offices so she could get off the catwalk. The door was only about four yards from her location, while Castle was suspended on the t-section of metal that led to the spiral staircase - cut off. "Castle, get back down the stairs-"

"Would you just _go_?" he bellowed. The catwalk groaned in response and broke free of the t-junction, pitching so sharply that he stumbled.

As a direct result, her own section of catwalk shuddered, and she felt it under her feet, how the metal was bowing, how gravity was dragging down the end near the staircase, ready to bring her down with it.

She had to go. Oh, God, she had to leave him here.

Castle was making his way to the spiral staircase, maneuvering around the collapsed section of steps, but he kept looking back at her, checking on her, and she realized they were going to die like this - both unwilling to move away before the other one reached safety.

So Kate turned her back on her husband and jogged for the offices a few yards away, her heart plummeting as fast as the catwalk around her.

Once she got into the relative safety of those offices though, how the _fuck_ was she supposed to get down again?

* * *

Castle watched as Beckett disappeared inside the glass-fronted office space, and then he got a move on it.

His only priority right now was his wife, and she would _not_ be okay if he didn't make it down from here in one piece.

Amend that. His only priority right now was to extract his partner in the field, to get them _out_ of an imminent fatality situation. It was textbook procedure. The pixel disc was only second to that one hard and fast rule: live to fight another day.

Problem was, as he maneuvered back down the spiral staircase as fucking fast as possible, he wasn't sure he himself was going to live to fight another day. And once he made it to the ground floor, the danger didn't stop. There was the catwalk itself about to come crashing down on his head, and then the demolition which could go off at any fucking moment. Probably the crew did safety checks, but it might not be anything more rigid than eye-spotting all the entrances and being certain the padlock remained.

And he'd told Beckett to make it look good.

Fucking hell.

Salome was fucking dead; he was going to _throttle_ her for this.

Castle felt the stairs shudder under his weight and he glanced back up. He was halfway down, still suspended some two stories in the air, and above him the catwalk was popping from its joists and listing at crazy angles. The staircase had the center pole running up through the spiral, but the damn pole was, of course, only attached as far as the main metal catwalk went - not to the concrete ceiling.

When the catwalk went, so did the staircase, in short order.

The faster he went, the worse the shaking got, and the more brittle the individual steps. Each metal piece was affixed to the center pole, welded, but the outside step was only screwed into the spiral railing. The whole thing was unsteady, and he had to keep placing his feet as close to the center pole as possible.

Not to even think about how damn rusted it all was, how one wrong shift of his weight could put his foot through it.

Which, going down in a tight spiral, meant he was missing steps more often than not, stumbling hard and going down to one knee before he could catch himself. There wasn't anything _to_ catch him really, there was only the swaying railing and every time he grabbed for it, pieces of gave way under the force of his grip.

And Kate. Kate alone up there with Salome, who _must_ have an alternate route, must have some way to get down. Beckett wasn't stupid; she wasn't one to leave things half done either. He could trust that Beckett would chase after Lo in order to keep the woman from getting the pixel, and in doing so, she would find her way back down again.

Had to be soon.

And if she didn't, well, he was damn well going to find a way back up.

So long as he could get off this fucking funhouse of a staircase.

* * *

Beckett dodged rusted bare furniture, file cabinets and massive desks for the most part, moving deeper into darkness of unlit offices. She had so far seen two strategically-placed C4 packs, and she'd gone ahead and pulled the wires from the clay - so fucking carefully - but she knew it was pointless.

Outside walls would collapse inward in a controlled demolition. If they survived the initial foundational blasts, which she doubted, the walls crush them.

Her only shot was to follow Salome to her hiding spot and then out the woman's escape route. She was too clever not to have one.

All three sets of spiral staircases she could see from the windows, and all three had detached from the catwalk. Pieces of it were swaying back and forth like surreal swings. As Beckett moved further inside the dark-shrouded section of offices, the morning light spilling in from the main floor was eclipsed, her sight cut off.

Now it was only the unrelenting black.

She wouldn't call out, wouldn't give Salome the warning so she could lay a trap. But the woman was making enough noise moving in a direct line for her stash that Beckett wasn't too afraid. Not to mention Lo had seemed genuinely shocked when Kate had mentioned the explosives, and Lo must have seen it with her own eyes by now.

They were all three of them rats scurrying for high ground on a sinking ship.

Castle. He would be fine; she had to trust in his abilities, his intelligence, and his fucking insightful problem solving skills. All there was to it. Trust that Castle would do what was necessary, and more, that Castle loved their son and wanted him to have at least one damn parent-

Actually-?

No, she didn't trust that. Castle wanted _her_ , moved for her, gravitated towards her in the same way and intensity that she gravitated towards him. She knew him too well, and he'd come back for her, and so she absolutely could not fail.

She had to find Salome and get them _down_ from here.

Ahead of her, the maze of hallways led to the final grouping of offices, and she had to shove her shoulder into the rusted-out door to get it open. She hurtled forward and tripped over a scattered pile of desk drawers. She went down hard to her hands and knees, wind knocked out of her and head pounding. When she got back on her feet again, she saw Salome through the open glass windows, the woman crouched over what looked to be a file cabinet.

Kate made a run for it, knowing they didn't have time for this, knowing that she was being led astray by concussion and exhaustion. She felt like shit, like she had - literally - run into an unforgiving metal dumpster. She couldn't rely on her sense of timing, or her own reactions, because sometimes opening a door felt like forever, and sometimes she was in another section of these offices without knowing how she got there.

Salome turned at her approach, the flare of her shredded black jeans as she moved. And then she scurried away. She'd gotten it, the pixel; she'd already found her stash.

"Lo!" she called out.

But Salome was running away from her.

Kate followed. It was all she had left, her only hope.

* * *

He was ten feet off the ground when the spiral staircase collapsed.

A terrific groan of crashing metal and suddenly the bottom dropped out. Castle went down with it, trapped by bars and metal supports, the steps taken out from under him.

He must have tried to brace himself somehow. He must have put his hands out to break his fall, unable to drop and roll like he'd been trained. He couldn't understand it any other way - couldn't explain how else it happened.

Because when the dust had cleared, Castle was on his knees inside a cage made of the spiral staircase, one shoulder wedged into the narrow end of two steps, his ears ringing, and his back supporting the weight of the formerly-center pole.

He was trapped.

And something - something was very wrong.

Metal railing was twisted against his right leg, as if warped to the form of his body, and the left was buried under a section of stairs that had fallen in altogether. The cage made of this section had penned him in, but he wasn't stuck by debris, wasn't _pinned_. He could shift things and get free of the bars - that was entirely possible.

But when Castle lifted up to put his back against the pole and push, agony burned up his forearm and ravaged the nerves inside his elbow, raced straight into his shoulder. He cried out, shocked more than anything, but he had no support there, no sensation of his hand, and he fell face first into the metal steps.

His heart was pounding too hard when he could move again. He could hear - strangely distorted, overloud - the sounds from outside, the demolition crew calling back and forth over the roar of engines.

He rolled to his shoulder, suddenly afraid of what he would see when he did.

But he still had his hand. A length of rebar had _not_ gone through his palm. It was only - mangled looking.

Castle groaned and shifted back in the tight confines of the staircase trap, easing his arm towards his chest. Pain lanced through him at just that minute a movement, and he had to fight hard to push past it.

He used his non-injured hand to push against the center pole, decided against it when it wouldn't budge. He moved carefully on his ass, twisting around until he could get his legs up, braced himself on one hand, and shoved with his feet against the metal railings.

The whole structure groaned and began to collapse - onto him.

Castle gasped when the railing landed on his chest, jarring his arm, his fucking mangled hand, and he fought it, he fucking fought it hard, but stars popped over his vision and his body was shutting down - pain and regimen combined - shutting down to heal him, couldn't heal broken fucking bones, oh _fuck_ , but he couldn't make himself stay.

Darkness collapsed on top of him as surely as the spiral staircase.

* * *

It wasn't an escape plan so much as a desperate bid for survival.

It was a straight drop down the wall if she put one move wrong, if one foothold fell through.

Beckett followed as closely in Salome's footsteps as she could, putting her feet in the same spots where Lo had found purchase, all while keeping as close to the woman as she dared. Too far away and Kate would miss that crucial next step, too near and Salome was apt to shove her off the wall.

And down to the concrete below.

The offices had backed up onto a fourth and final staircase, but this one was nothing more than a fire escape. Metal brackets fit it into the wall like those rolling library ladders, only so much of the catwalk on this side was already destroyed or collapsed that it was more like a controlled descent. Place her foot in a nook of warped metal and hope it held.

But after only five or six steps down, the way grew steeply more difficult. And with Salome's leg injury, Beckett could see that the woman didn't have the strength to get down. The pixel bulged in the back pocket of her jeans on her good side, and past the rise of the woman's ass was the sheer drop off to the warehouse floor below.

The nearest shelving unit was woefully too far away to even factor in, and the fire escape ladder would have to be abandoned for the pock-marked wall itself. Debris mountain for fucking serious this time.

The only problem was - Salome was between Kate and the nearest next handhold. She would have to crawl down over Salome in order to keep going down.

Right.

"Salome," she gritted out. Her hands were sweat-soaked and slippery on the metal. "Listen to me-"

"No. Don't come _near_ me," Lo shouted back.

"There's no time. If you want to live, you'll have to let me help you. We'll have to do it together."

"Why should I even _trust_ -"

"Just _look_ at where we are. I can't get past you. And you can't get down on that damn leg. We are both fucked if you don't move."

Lo set her jaw and gripped the last rung of the fire escape ladder, shifted slightly to her right as if to test her leg out anyway. When her weight settled on it, she groaned and pressed her forehead to the metal wall, sweat making her skin shine.

The sound of the catwalk shifting and groaning, falling here and there from damaged joists, was so loud that it blocked whatever noises might be coming from outside.

"Salome, there's no time for this," she called. "You saw the charges. We have _got_ to get out of here."

She felt that dark, deep terror in her guts, the voice inside her screaming for Castle, Castle, but he wasn't here.

And that had her infinitely more terrified.

Because if Castle had survived that long descent down the stairs, he'd be _right_ here. With her. He wouldn't leave her. He would not go home alone.

 _Castle._

"Fine," Salome snapped. "Fine. Fuck. I fucking hate you all, you fucking CIA ghosts with your high and mighty attitudes. Just _once_ I want to fucking get out ahead-"

"Can you save the speech?" Beckett snapped. "We'll work better together if you're not talking. Bitch."

Salome flashed her a dark look, but there was - she thought - a certain morbid humor in it. "Who are you calling bitch, bitch?"

Beckett grinned back, feral and dangerous as she knew she could be - as she was when Castle was in danger (and he _was,_ oh God, where the fuck was Castle?), and then she began to move sideways along the bracket-studded concrete wall, going as fast as she dared.

"I'm going to climb - over you," she told the woman. "So don't fucking move."

Salome offered her a crude gesture in return, but had to slap her hand back to the metal rung in a panicked lunge as she began to fall.

It was worse than Beckett had assumed. Salome was putting zero weight on her leg now, and her uninjured leg was unable to support her. As Beckett eased her own foot just below Salome's hand, her ankle practically in the woman's armpit, she could see why.

Salome wasn't standing on an actual rung. It was only one of the short, twisted brackets screwed into the concrete wall. It gave her no leverage and no support to stand.

"Oh, fuck," Beckett whispered. "You could have warned me there was no damn foothold."

"There's no damn foothold."

Kate actually laughed, a terrible sound, but she wouldn't be deterred. She was getting down; she was going home to her son _with_ her husband. She didn't fucking care if it was a bracket screwed into the wall, there were others. There would be others.

Beckett queried with her other foot and stepped onto the rung just below Salome's hands, her thighs now straddling the woman's neck. Lo's dark hair was flecked with concrete dust, her teeth gritted as she tried to hang on.

"This is the worst part," Beckett warned her. "I have to go over you and press you up against the wall to keep my balance."

"I know. I _know_. Just fucking move."

Beckett reached down with her right hand, her strong hand, and gripped the rung near Salome's face, for a moment perched there awkwardly, knees bent and arm taking her weight, letting her ass sink down until she was crouched over the woman. And then she had to adjust her hold, carefully, so fucking carefully, to cling to the rung with one arm and search out a foothold with her shortened leg.

It put her body flush to Lo's and the woman groaned in pain, cursing in Spanish as Kate put too much weight against her.

But it couldn't be helped.

And she couldn't find a foothold below Salome's.

"Fuck, fuck," Kate panted.

Lo grunted back. "This is not how I pictured you breathless in my ear."

"Oh, no?" Kate lobbed back. "Maybe I _did._ "

"Masochist."

"Sometimes," she breathed, probing with the tip of one foot- "Oh, God, _yes._ "

"Becks?"

"I found it," she croaked, straining with one foot in the smallest toehold yet. A dip in the concrete, but it took her weight. It would work for a moment. "I found something anyway."

"This is turning entirely too erotic," Salome groaned. "Would you hurry up and _move?"_

"Yes, yes," Beckett panted. "Moving. I think. I hope. Hang on."

And then she had to do it all over again with the other foot, her body pressed intimately to Salome's, the sweat making her hands shake.

But she was damn well getting down.


	11. Chapter 11

**Close Encounters 30**

* * *

Despite the groan of collapsing catwalk, what Castle heard first when he regained consciousness was her voice.

 _Castle_

He opened his eyes and watched the warehouse fill up with sunlight, dust motes swirling like a ballet, choreographed to a music he didn't hear. There was a long moment, warped by the isolation of shock, in which he could only track those points of light; he could do nothing else.

And then a piece of the railing above him shifted and brought the center pole down against his shoulder and he cried out.

Pain had him by the teeth, shaking.

Castle gasped, his body jerking reflexively, and while that redoubled the agony, it also served to shift the structure, the metal bars gaping about a foot off the ground.

Free. He could get free.

If only he could _get_ to that gap.

The center pole with its welded steps was still pressing against his shoulder while he laid flat on his back, and every movement sent fresh terror through his arm, as if his hand itself had already shut down and what he was feeling was the tremor of shock pouring through his system.

Reminding him he had to get out of here - _now._

In the middle of this shifting destruction, Castle really did hear her voice.

"Beckett," he tried calling back. But his chest was restricted by the force of the pole, and the pain was dancing lights in front of his eyes. He growled and lifted his knees - tried to - tried to move the fucking-

"Oh, God, Castle."

She was there, pressed against the bars of the railing that trapped him, a hand reaching for him.

"Beck-"

She turned immediately and grabbed at Salome, who had been right behind her. "Help me. _Help_ me."

Salome wriggled out of her grip, jostling Beckett so that the spiral staircase teetered - on the fulcrum point of Castle's chest.

He groaned, eyes rolling back as the pain crushed down into him.

"Stop, stop, _Salome_ -"

When he could open his eyes again, it was only Beckett - on her knees before the cage, slumped towards him so that her forehead touched the bar.

"Castle," she moaned.

"It's okay," he told her. But it wasn't. It wasn't okay; he was stuck, and the pain was crippling, and she wasn't going to move, was she? She wasn't going to leave him. And the building would go down with them.

 _No._

Kate was undaunted. Her fist uncurled and she gripped the bars of the railing, pushing hard on the metal. He grunted and moved his good hand to help, using his thighs against the pole, but it was impossible - they were pushing into each other rather than with.

And then without warning, Beckett was trying to fit her whole body under that foot-high gap.

"Don't, don't," he panted. "Baby, don't do that."

"Let me get in-"

"No," he growled.

"You're pinned," she cried out. "You're stuck, Castle. The pole. I need to get in there-"

"No. Help me get _out_."

She kept coming, gripping his good arm where he tried to push her away. "I am. I _am_ \- I won't be able to lift it straight up, Castle. Fucking stop - _stop_ -" as he tried to shove her back out. "Stop. If I can get in there, I can get to the pole and help you shift it. With my legs. But I cannot do it from out here. You have to let me in there."

He growled in complete frustration, but she was coming inside the cage, squirming through the gap to press right up against him.

"Kate," he begged.

"Hush, baby, this is the only way I can help you."

He almost said _then go_.

He wanted to. He wanted her to save herself and let him try to work it alone, but she would never - she would never forgive him for even suggesting it.

And he didn't know how much time they had before the building came down around them.

* * *

"On three," she gritted through her teeth. She pushed experimentally at the pole with her toes, gripping Castle's hand in her own. "One. Two. Three."

Together on their backs, they shoved against the center pole, Kate placed up closer to his torso while Castle did the best he could with his knees and feet. The whole structure shrieked, creaking metal and popping joints, and she felt it beginning to shift.

"Almost there," she panted. "Almost-"

Castle suddenly groaned and his body shifted; she felt the pole's weight buckling her knees as she held it alone.

"Castle!"

"Hang - hang on, my hand."

"What's - wrong with your hand?" she cried, loosening her grip on the one she held.

"Other hand. Hang on. Wait a second, wait," he groaned. "It's pressing against my hand."

"What do you need me to do?" she said fast. Her heart was pounding, their palms sticking together. The center pole was pressing against his _hand_?

"Okay, wait, I need-" Castle grunted and she felt him shift beside her. Her shoulder was wedged at his armpit. "I need you to lift straight up. Not over. Can you-?"

"Fuck, yes, I can," she growled back. Already she was rebracing her feet and pushing up. Castle gasped and something in the structure shook free, rattling and clanging somewhere past their heads.

"I can move my shoulder," he gasped. "I can-"

She suddenly had the full weight of the pole bearing down on her, and she realized Castle had dropped his side to work on wriggling out from under it. She grunted and had to press her fists into the floor to keep her balance, but as the center pole began to slowly collapse her knees, Castle shoved his torso against her shoulder.

"I'm out," he croaked. "I'm out. Kate-"

The pole clanged sharply as it hit the concrete floor and they both laid there a second, breathing hard.

"It's a tight fit," she whispered. The gap had been narrow for her; she couldn't imagine Castle getting through it. "We'll have to make this part of the pole turn-"

"I can fit," he said. "We have to go. We don't have time to shift it anymore."

"Okay," she said. But-

"Right now, Kate. I will fucking break the bars in half if I have to. I want us out of here."

He was right; they had to get moving. She had peeled apart the contact points on three more C4 packs at support pillars as she'd searched the warehouse for him, but it was still going to be very bad.

Beckett maneuvered her body around the crooked slant of the steps and then around a loose piece of railing. She had to slither like a snake between the steps and then she was crawling out of the cage of the staircase to the concrete floor.

She turned back immediately. "Castle-" But her words were stolen when she saw him. Curled half over, his body compact as he tried to work through the railing, Castle was cradling his left arm against his chest.

"Not - as bad as that," he rasped.

"Oh, my God," she whispered. She jerked forward and gripped the edges of the railing, tried to lift it straight up to help-

"Gonna be okay," he said. "Get out of here, be okay." His movements weren't quite as precise, his body took too long to unfold.

"Come on, Castle," she snapped. "You have to move. Right now."

"I am. Am." He nodded and winced, licked his lips. Determination steeled him, and he pushed both shoulders through the foot-wide gap.

Impossibly.

And yet Castle got a knee under him, a shoulder braced against a section of the steps, and he pushed upwards. The gap rose to two feet, and Kate got her own shoulder under it, gripped a fistful of his shirt. "Now, now-"

He stumbled and fell out, groaning as an elbow hit the floor. She couldn't keep the staircase lifted, couldn't hold it up, but Castle gasped her name and she twisted out behind him-

The edge of a step caught her hip as she moved, bruising an already bruised pelvis, but she didn't give a fuck. Castle was hauling himself to his feet, his hand up against his chest, the other reaching for her.

"Let's go," she said, taking his uninjured hand in hers and turning for the exit. "Back this way. There's a fire door on the opposite side, away from the offices. Salome left through there." She was running now, but she found herself pulling on him as she did, his steps too slow. "Come on, Castle, come on. This place is going down any second."

"Fuck," he groaned. She knew it was hurting him, not just because of the pain of broken bones, but the pain of his regimen-enhanced blood attempting to knit them back together.

"Castle, pick up your feet. I'm not dying in here."

"Hell, no," he growled. "You are not."

"And neither are you," she tossed back at him. "So fucking _move_."

"Yes - yes, ma'am," he panted. But he did pick up his feet, galvanized by her imprecation. She knew running flat out like this had to be killing his arm, but he was still with her.

He was with her until the first charge went off.

* * *

When the explosion hit, Castle was thrown forward, careening into Beckett and pushing her to the floor with sheer momentum. He covered her as the percussive blew over them, and then debris peppered their clothes and hair, blasted across his back.

"Castle? Castle-" she was yelling under him.

He scrambled to get to his knees, his arm on fire, his hand bent wrong. "Fine, I'm fine. Are you-"

"That was the silo in the warehouse yard. This place is next."

He heard that horrendous, now-familiar sound of metal tearing away from metal, and Castle looked up.

The massive inventory shelves were starting to topple.

"Oh, God-"

He ran, shoving on her, not wasting breath or energy to speak, simply gripping her upper arm and dashing for the back wall. His bones were being ground to dust, but he didn't have the luxury of pain. There was no such thing as pain when death was breathing down their necks.

The shelving units were crashing like dominoes at the front of the warehouse. But they had to run the gauntlet of these two - in the dead middle of the range - before they could get clear and get to that damn door.

The sound of metal crashing against metal built to a crescendo right at their backs, and even as he sprinted, he felt Kate falling behind him, _felt_ the shelves beginning to collapse.

He gripped her arm and catapulted her ahead of him, pain ripping out of his throat as his body contorted, but the impact of those shelves toppling sent a jarring note through his bones and a gush of hot air at their backs.

They had just managed to get clear. Momentum carrying him forward, Castle crashed into a ceiling beam that had fallen. He gasped and crumpled, his good elbow catching the slope of the fallen beam and catching his fall. Beckett had dashed ahead of him to pry open a door in the metal wall, but she glanced back and cried his name.

"Fine," he shouted back, ducking awkwardly under the beam. "Keep moving." He came to her side, used his good hand to put a little more force into her efforts.

"Rusted shut," she grunted. Her eyes tripped to his hand and he saw the way it affected her.

"She didn't leave this way," he remarked. "Did she not - find the pixel? Go back up for it?"

"No, she found it," Beckett clipped. "But I lifted it off her when she left you to fucking die under the staircase, the fucking bitch. It's in the back pocket of my jeans. She doesn't get shit if she _leaves_ you."

"That's my girl," he breathed, finally muscling open the rusted door and letting strange, blue sunlight in through the crack.

Beckett slipped out first, turned back for him. But he was wriggling out beside her, the wind howling across the bleak yard, kicking up dust and spattering his face with rain. When he popped free, he stumbled again, pain making him dizzy.

"Still alive," he croaked. Dirt had caught in his eyes and he worked to keep himself upright.

"Rain delay," she panted, and nodded towards the chain link fence to one side. He didn't fucking care why, he just knew they'd been given a miracle.

Time.

"Move, Castle," she said sharply in his ear. He realized she had a grip on his elbow, the injured side, his hand cradled at his chest as he tried to hustle. They were running again, making their way to the fence, and the demolition crew had spotted them.

Cries went up, _alto! alto!_ but no fucking way they were stopping. "The Jeep-"

"You have the keys," she hissed out.

"I do," he confirmed, feeling them rattle against his calf in the cargo pocket. "I have the keys. Can't let them catch up to us though."

"I don't know where Lo went to, but at least - at least workers spotting us means they won't go through with demolition."

Beckett sounded winded. Fuck, _he_ was winded. He wanted to collapse, but they couldn't afford to lose another second. They'd already left a trail so wide and long that the CIA was going to have a time of cleaning it up.

When they got to the fence, he glanced at her fast, safety check, but she was still with him.

"Ready for this?" he grimaced. The fence was eight foot, though the razor wire here had been stripped. Just chain link, and beside it, a motionless excavator.

He climbed into the cab of the excavator and then monkeyed to the roof, more slowly than he'd hoped because he kept forgetting about his useless hand and trying to reach out with it. The metal roof of the excavator was sloped, and burning hot with the morning sun, but he gestured for her to come on up.

Beckett scrambled up a lot faster than he had. They moved as one for the long mechanical arm of the digging apparatus, climbing the metal beam to the right-angled arm where it was poised just at the fence.

He made her go first, wrapping his legs around the metal arm and giving her his uninjured hand. He lowered her over the side of the chainlink fence until her toes had a foothold, until she could get one hand in the links, and then she was climbing down the fence.

Castle sat up, swung one leg over the metal arm, and then side-walked the metal lip of the frame. When he was over the top of the fence and far out on the other side, he stopped and estimated his distance.

Might be tricky one-handed. But it was all he had. Already construction crew had unlocked the main gate and were pulling a couple of trucks through to chase after them.

Castle curled his good arm through the piston rod that maneuvered the digging end of the arm, hooked tight, and then he dangled himself over the fence.

Kate, who had not gone all the way to the ground, reached back with one hand and guided his feet into footholds, gripped his belt to anchor him until he could catch himself. He had a moment of breathless suspension, hanging from the excavator and trying to keep his balance on the fence, before the strength in his upper torso kicked in and he crashed hard into the chainlink.

His hand was excruciating.

"Thank, God," she groaned. "They're coming. They've found the police too."

"Fuck," he whispered.

It just didn't end.

Beckett jumped to the ground and he followed after her, couldn't help the noise that tore out of his throat when every bone in his body jostled with the impact.

But Kate had a fist in his shirt and was shoving him towards the place he'd hidden the Jeep.


	12. Chapter 12

**Close Encounters 30**

* * *

She half expected Salome to have stolen the Jeep. When the women didn't appear before them racing down the path to where Castle had hidden their transportation, and the vehicle was clearly still there, Beckett became afraid for her.

Castle reached back and grabbed her by the upper arm and attempted to forcibly lift her over the side and into the Jeep. The fact that he only barely couldn't, owing to one hand being unusable, impressed her all over again. His tenacity. His strength. His determination to save her.

He pushed on her hip. "Get _in._ "

"You're not driving. You're liable to pass out-"

"Pot meet kettle," he growled.

"You've used that twice in one day," she snapped back, but she was already hoisting herself into the Jeep, completing the job he'd only half-managed with her. She did it to move things along.

Castle ran around the other side and hopped in, dug his keys out with his right hand, jammed them into the ignition. She reached past him and grabbed his seatbelt even as he started the Jeep, and she buckled him in first and then herself.

The Jeep rocketed forward, farther down the path he'd created taking it offroad in the first place, and she clung to the rollbar overhead to keep her seat. Castle grunted with the Jeep's bouncing shocks, and she saw his face turn white.

"Clinic," she said tersely.

"No, I-"

"You _have_ to get those fingers set," she said abruptly. "And I can't do it, Castle. I _cannot_ set your fingers, the fine metacarpal bones, the carpal bones, no. You will lose all manual dexterity. You could lose _function_."

She saw him swallow, and she pressed her advantage.

"And I need to take a _breath_. You were right to drive. I'm upright only barely. Kinda going on fumes."

He shot her a swift, intense look and she let him see that she wasn't just manipulating him. She _was_ manipulating him, but it was also true.

"We both need to hole up, wherever it is, but we can't do that without getting some medical attention. A clinic to set your hand, get a soft cast, and I probably need IV fluids." And observation for a concussion, but Castle himself usually did that. If he got the bones set and his hand in a soft cast and no pain meds, then she could lie down in his hospital bed and close her eyes for a second. Just-

"Okay," Castle said, his voice cutting through the noise of the engine. "A clinic. There's - a trauma center near the technological university. Or there was ten years ago."

"Please," she sighed. Her body was still rigid with tension from holding herself together and trying not to jostle the pounding ache in her skull or the throb of her own pulse in her jaw. Beyond that were the bruises on her pelvis and sternum, and the abrasions on her elbows, forearms, and face. Not to mention the cramps in her toes and fingers from climbing down that disintegrated fire escape.

Rest wasn't an option right now. She was too worried about his hand, and his regimen-enhanced blood trying to knit bones back together that weren't in their correct spots. The longer this took, the worse the pain would be for him when the doc did have to set the bones. She'd seen one study of Black's where they'd been forced to re-break every bone in the man's arm to put it right again.

It terrified her, what Black had done to people in the name of the perfect soldier. And in _not quite_ achieving that perfection - her super husband - Black had fucked up Castle's genetic makeup so damn much that now they just never knew with him. They couldn't know if what they were doing would fuck up some careful balance or set him back decades, and yet they kept trying.

"Beckett," he snapped. "Eyes up."

She jerked forward, realizing she'd been in some kind of trance, hypnotized by the rough road and her own damage. Was she going into shock?

Kate holstered her weapon for a moment, swiped her sweaty palm against her jeans, and then carefully took out her gun once more. She gave herself two deep breaths and then twisted in the seat to keep watch. That was her job right now; she had to focus.

Beckett scanned the road ahead for obstacles he might miss while trying to detour them around the gaps in the scrub brush. And then she swiveled her head and scanned the road behind, keeping her weapon ready in her free hand, on the lookout for demolition workers or police coming after them.

"Okay, hang on. I'm turning back onto the main road."

The front wheels hit hard and she cringed, her head splitting with agony before she could get control of it.

"Sorry, baby, so sorry-"

"You too," she gasped. She could _hear_ the pain in his voice, how it had hurt him probably more.

"Yeah," he croaked out. "Clinic is fucking right."

"You saying I'm right?" she asked, trying for teasing, light.

"I'm saying it's possible you can - on occasion - come up with an accurate assessment of our current predicament."

"Listen to that bullshit coming out of your mouth," she scoffed.

"Too long behind a desk, baby."

She laughed, weird and aching as it sounded, half a groan, while the tires jounced over potholes because Castle wouldn't reduce his speed. He glanced over at her, a fast look, checking on her.

"Eyes up," she mimicked.

"Fuck off. I'm doing _my_ job. Are you even watching the road?"

"Yes," she grit out, but she glanced behind them once more. The collection of warehouses where Salome had stored her treasure were now more than a mile behind them, and while she heard the distinct whine of sirens, there was no one on their tail.

Yet.

"Kate, honey-"

"No," she snapped. "Don't. Don't you dare." He wasn't allowed to say _I love you_ like it was a parting gift, like this might be the end of the road for them, like he couldn't _hang on_. He had fucking better hang on. "We just survived a fucking demolition, so keep your damn sentiments to yourself."

"I hate you."

"Right back at you."

She saw, from the corner of her eye even though it hurt like fucking hell to look, his crooked and pained little smile, like the agony was worth it just to hear her refuse to say she loved him back.

* * *

The had to dump the Jeep inside a junk yard and walk to the clinic, stripping off their weapons and shoving them into a bag. Two reasons for hiding the Jeep, which he had explained to her even as he was picking the padlock that chained the gate closed. One - no one in the barrio ever drove a shiny tourist's Jeep unless it was stolen, which it was. And two - if the police did find the Jeep, or for that matter if Lo found it, then it wouldn't immediately lead back to them while they were somewhat vulnerable inside the clinic.

They came up with their story on the entirely torturous walk of seven long blocks, and the back and forth plus her mild swearing at him every few feet was enough to keep him conscious.

He wasn't sure how much longer he could remain so. He didn't tell her that, but she seemed to know it anyway.

He was relieved when the trauma center appeared before them, and by the time they came in the door, he was cradling his hand so close to his chest he was afraid he wouldn't be able to move his arm.

"We were in a car accident, last night," she told the intake nurse. She was jittery and trembling, and she might be going into shock - but she kept shooting him death stares every time he opened his mouth to say _her first_.

"Last night?" the nurse clucked. "Bad idea to wait, very bad. We'll have to see. Come on back. You fill this out-"

"She needs fluids," he said abruptly, unwilling to wait any longer. "This is just my hand, but she's been up all night, because our cousin said watch her for a concussion, but she needs fluids."

The nurse gave him a double take, which wasn't ideal (probably most low-income workers didn't know to tell the nurse about IV fluids) but he didn't fucking care right this second. Kate needed those damn fluids, and he was almost too out of it to keep upright. She had to be balanced out because _she_ was the one who couldn't maintain her levels on her own; he just needed someone to pop his bones back into place.

Kate shot him another look, but he set his jaw and growled _obey me_ \- which made the nurse startle.

Kate gave a little tinkling laugh, out of character for Beckett, but in character for some wife somewhere maybe (did _any_ wife laugh so sweetly when her husband demanded obedience?), and she said something like _oh you_ while she batted her eyes.

The intake nurse was now giving them both the stink eye, like they were deviant and strange, and he really didn't care so long as she gave them a hospital bed. And Beckett an IV. And no pain meds for either of them because that would be really bad.

"No pain-" he started, but Kate hushed him with a squeeze around his bicep where she was hanging on.

 _Shut your fucking mouth_ , it said so very clearly, and he did.

He did because she handled the medical shit a thousand times better than he ever had, and because he was fairly certain that the regimen was humming to life inside him once more and trying very hard to drag him down into coma-healing.

He couldn't let that happen. Not when Kate needed the rest more.

Castle followed the intake nurse into the back, Beckett at his side and answering questions, filling out forms on the clipboard even while she walked. When the nurse had led them into an exam room, he was relieved to find it was actually a multi-bed room, divided up with curtains.

The intake nurse took the paperwork and handed them off to a floor nurse.

Before he knew it, that second nurse had somehow managed to steer him to the mattress and push him to sit, leaning back against the raised head. He gasped when she probed his hand, not expecting it. Beckett was right beside him, stroking his shoulder on his uninjured side, and he was absurdly grateful for it.

But he wished the nurse would give Beckett an IV first. "She needs fluids," he repeated. "Baby, go-"

"No. I'm not going."

"Just to the next bed," he said, turning back to the nurse. "She needs an IV-"

"I know. The nurse from out front filled me in. We have the phlebotomist coming in to draw some blood and do a full work up. Meanwhile, Senor Fernandez-"

 _Fernandez?_ Castle gave Beckett a slack-jawed look and she pinched his side.

"Yes," he answered gruffly, not sure what he was answering, only that Beckett had signed them in under Salome's name. _What the fuck, woman._

"Agency is compromised," Kate murmured into his ear, leaving a chaste kiss on his cheek.

"Very good," the nurse said. "The doctor will be right in."

The nurse left, tugging the curtain around them, and he glanced down at his hand to find it taped to a styrofoam board. He blinked, dumb-founded by how and when that had happened, and then he dragged his gaze to his wife.

"I need you," he said. His voice sounded bad - laced with the echoes of pain that he was trying very hard not to actually feel.

"I'm right here," she said, calm. Steady. Not a moment's doubt in her voice.

"I mean, crawl in with me. Need you with me."

Her face changed swiftly, and he saw all of that terrible longing for _rest_.

It made his stomach twist. "Please, baby. Please just crawl in with me and lie down and I promise - I promise I'll keep you safe. I won't need to sleep once they get the hand set. I promise I can keep you safe."

Her eyes were watery, and he expected resistance, digging in her heels, but instead she gave him a broken little nod and climbed onto the bed with him. He had to bite down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep from showing how fucking much that hurt, jostling the mattress, but he shifted until she had enough room.

Kate let out a harsh sound and slumped down against his side, and he opened his arm and curled it around her shoulders. He couldn't help leaning in over her and pressing his mouth to her temple, breathing her in, the sweat and concrete dust and travel soap of her, but he didn't close his eyes.

He wouldn't.

There was no way he could. His hand was pure liquid agony, and it wasn't going to get any better.

"No pain meds," she mumbled, her lips brushing his neck.

"I know," he said, words tight in his throat.

"The IV," she sighed. "Don't let them put me away from you."

"No, baby. You're staying right here. I've got you, Kate."

"Don't let go."

"Never."

* * *

She had been vaguely aware of him slipping a fat wad of pesos to the floor nurse for some expedited care, and then she came fully awake when the phlebotomist drew her blood. She opened her eyes to see a kind, round face and and to feel the sting on her finger where it had been pricked.

She shifted to look at Castle and felt him petting her hair, and the weight of his fingers on top of her head made her wobble back against his shoulder.

She was so tired.

The nurse was saying something to him about wheeling him down the hall for X-rays, and Kate tried to rouse again, forcing her eyes open.

"No, I'm okay. I can walk," she muttered, sliding her legs out of the bed.

"No, hush, Kate, hush," he was saying in her ear. "You're staying right here with me."

She paused, confused, but the woman was pushing her back to the raised head of the bed and she went, lying against Castle's shoulder once more. The nurse pulled Kate's right arm away from her body, and then she was tapping at the crook of Kate's elbow with two fingers. Tap-tap, and then tap-tap, and then she ripped open an alcohol wipe, swabbed Kate's arm, and was inserting a needle before Kate knew what was going on.

"It's okay, it's the IV. Had to pay for a little special treatment."

All Kate could do was watch as the nurse inserted the line and set up the IV bag, and then fluids were being drained into her. The bag was hung on a pole beside Castle's bed, and when she turned her head to look, she realized Castle's hand was still taped to the styrofoam board.

"What about your hand?" she croaked.

"Just finished X-rays. They have a machine like at the dentist's office, and they just took a bunch of shots of my hand while you drooled on my shoulder."

"Oh." She blinked and glanced back to her arm, dazzled by the bright pink band-aid over the line to tape it down. "Oh, okay. When... they need to set your hand. They have to get the bones set before-"

Castle nudged his chin into her temple. "I know. I got it covered. Trust me to look out for us, baby. Can you do that? I need you to rest while we have the time, because I'm gonna need you when we slip out of here."

"Yeah," she got out, nodding dumbly. She was exhausted. She wasn't sleepy, which would be a bad sign if she were concussed; she just ached in every part of her body. Her hips, her chest, but mostly in her jaw.

His kiss touched her forehead; he hummed at her temple. "Sleep, sweetheart. They're looking at the X-rays, doc seems really competent. He's getting a surgeon's opinion about the knuckles."

"No, no surgery-"

"I know. I already said," he whispered, as if he was trying to lull her back to sleep. "No surgery, no pain meds. Sleep, love, you need to sleep while you can."

"Knuckles," she mumbled, but it was so hard to keep her eyes open. So easy to sink into the heat of his body and the strength of his arm around her. She felt the IV in her elbow like an irritation, and she actually moved a hand to thoughtlessly scratch - but Castle caught her fingers.

"You know my knuckles will heal just fine if they set the finger bones straight. Just fine, Kate. Just fine."

"You're fine," she echoed, but it might have only been in her head.


	13. Chapter 13

**Close Encounters 30**

* * *

Beckett slept for four hours.

During that time, the doctor came back with the X-rays, popped them all up on the lightboard, and then discussed the procedure with Castle as he went about injecting lidocaine into Castle's hand.

Lidocaine he could handle; lidocaine wouldn't fuck him up for weeks.

After the injections, the doctor started with his pinky.

To his relief, Castle didn't quite feel it. There was some tugging as the digit was taped to the splint, and then a strange feeling as the doctor injected a steroid shot (Castle had not been able to say no to the steroids; plus he was sure he'd had them before, so it would be fine). Turned out the pinky was easy, because the next finger felt like someone was grinding his knuckle into dust.

 _Fuck._

Castle kept his lips pressed together and dug the heel of his left foot into the mattress to keep from crying out.

It fucking hurt. And Kate was asleep curled into his other side.

The ring finger was taped to his pinky, and then the doctor skipped his middle and index, and proceeded instead to his thumb. Like the pinky, he felt nothing other than a few tugs and then a wave of relief that poured over him so fast it felt like coming down from a high.

Thumb must've been out of joint. Holy _fuck_. That felt so much better. Damn. He might pass out.

He lifted his good hand from Kate and swiped it down his face, breathing hard as the feeling cascaded through his body. Whatever that had been, however mangled his thumb, the doc had obviously put it right.

It was splinted in a strangle angle and then the doctor did another series of X-rays.

Castle breathed through it, his index and middle fingers still in agony and now his two smaller fingers beginning to throb and pulse in time to his heartbeat. The skin was hot and shiny, which meant healing, and he was at least glad to know that the regimen was working.

The young doctor came back in with a laptop after about five minutes, and Castle saw that _these_ were digital X-rays, and that the doctor was drawing a kind of line from his middle finger down through his palm, mapping the bones.

He said something about the alignment, and then set about working on his hand once more.

Castle twitched when the doc lifted his middle finger. It hurt so badly he had to close his eyes. He picked the Cantonese language and began counting, forcing himself to remember the flash cards he'd held in his hands as a five year old, the very first time he'd met his father, picturing every line of every character, superimposing the calligraphy in his mind's eye, those flash cards he'd ignored on the ride to his new home. Those flashcards he'd been punished for not memorizing.

Before he knew it, he was slipping into his meditative state, his technique taught by his father over the course of that first Christmas break. Castle found himself breathing deeply, his mind forming its usual list of objectives met/objectives outstanding. There was Salome in the wind, the diamonds in his backpack shoved under the hospital bed, two guns and a set of knives in the pack, their cover IDs which were blown because of the CIA passing information, and the Director in on some of this but maybe not all.

Castle breathed out and the doctor was taping his fingers and encasing them together in a semi-flexible plaster cast. The hand and wrist went into a wrap-around soft cast - a kind of brace, basically - and he was given one more steroid shot in the base of his thumb.

That same strange _relief_ fell over him again when the doctor manipulated his thumb afterwards, and Castle nodded, thanking the man quietly so he wouldn't wake Kate.

"Another round of steroids in six weeks," the doctor said, noting his instructions as he filled in the chart. "And for her - IV fluids for another four hours. The nurse will be in to change the bag in a few minutes."

" _Gracias_ ," Castle said again. But he needed to get them out of here; they couldn't stay for another four hours, even if she did need the fluids.

The doctor handed him the forms and Castle took the pen with his good right hand. He scanned the top document and saw she had signed them in as Marco and Ilda Fernandez. Better than their compromised IDs as the Hunts. She'd been thinking that far ahead at least.

Castle signed his 'name' with a cramped haste and then gave back the form. The doctor nodded at him and stood for a moment, and then Castle realized what the man was waiting for.

Money.

He'd promised pesos for greasing the wheels and getting Beckett's IV fluids in before they'd done the full blood work - he had known they couldn't wait around for blood tests to be finished. Blood tests would be damning. But he hadn't exactly meant to jump himself to the top of the list.

Ah, well, the doc had done a fucking excellent job. Why not?

So Castle lifted a finger and shifted slowly to one hip, reached to unbutton the flap of his back pocket. He tugged out his emergency stash and handed the doctor half of it.

The man actually flushed and wouldn't meet Castle in the eye, and his hand hesitated, the money practically shaking. And then the doctor laid the money on the tray he'd used to steady Castle's hand, began turning away.

"Not the cartel," Castle said quietly in English. "We're not cartel."

The young doc whipped around, head-checking the other curtained-off areas before he came back to Castle's bedside.

In English, the doctor said, "You should keep that to yourself around here." His accent was almost nonexistent.

"I will," Castle murmured back. "Can you - tell me which spots to avoid?"

"Americans," the young man said, shaking his head. "Mierda. CIA, yes? Stupid. All of you. Barrio is the worst place. Too white."

"Too white," he sighed. His blue eyes. He should have insisted on the contacts and allowed his Spanish-conquistadors look to let him pass. Beckett was no native flower, but she could pass from far away if they dyed her hair. Both of them had been on the island long enough to brown their skin.

"The neighborhood just behind the Save," the doctor said then. "The discount grocery? You know where I mean. Do not show your face on those streets, leave quickly. Please. For your sakes - for this beautiful woman, yes?"

"Yes," Castle answered, but he had no intention of avoiding that neighborhood. If that was the cartel's stronghold, then that was where Salome would find her friends, find help.

And they had to find Salome.

But first, he would give Kate about an hour more of sleep, and himself the chance to rest long enough for his body to begin knitting his bones back together.

By tonight, he should be able to remove the plaster from around his knuckles, and tomorrow morning - the splints.

If the regimen worked like it was supposed to.

* * *

Castle tapped lightly at the side of Beckett's cheek until her eyes began to flutter, and then he kissed her forehead and murmured her name close to her skin.

She roused with a groan and turned harder into his side as if to hide from the light.

"Wake up, baby. Sorry, but we don't have time. Pretty sure the cartel has been notified about the two gringoes in recovery."

Kate sucked in a breath and sat up straight, gripping a fistful of his shirt. He had been allowed to change into scrub pants rather than a hospital gown, but that had only been due to some fast talk and a chunk of their emergency money. Worth it to be wearing his own t-shirt again, easier to get out of here fast.

"What - happened?" she croaked, back with him again.

"My hand's been set," he told her. "You'll have to cut off the plaster around my knuckles in about two or three hours."

She nodded and reached for his splinted and soft-casted hand, cradled his arm between her thighs. He grit his teeth but the bone-rattling pain was finally gone; mostly it was just numb and aching. "How's it feel?" she murmured. Her nails were tracing lightly along his wrist.

"I'll survive," he said. "We need to get moving. Can you?"

"Yeah. Gotta - unfold myself from here." She gave him a rueful look and settled his hand back in his lap, and then she turned to get off the bed. Her foot touched the floor and she winced, but he thought it was just her body being awakened anew to its bruises.

"How about you?" he asked. "You okay?" He drew his arm slowly into his chest but even that movement was fine. Well. Relatively speaking. He put his other hand to the bed and levered himself to the edge while he studied her carefully.

"Bruised, sore, but I'm okay." She nodded and touched the side of her face, a surprised look at him. "Did it get iced?'

"Yeah, they gave me a chemical pack to put on and off for a couple hours. Swelling went down fast and stayed down."

"Oh," she murmured, probing her jaw with her fingers. "Good. That's - unusual."

"Is it?" His heart rate kicked up, but the beat of his pulse in his fingers didn't make him dizzy with pain - that was a good sign. "That's not normal-?"

"Not entirely," she hedged. "I don't know. They didn't do bloodwork, did they?"

"They tried, but I think there's a pretty steep backlog. When we go missing, they won't do the tests, pretty sure."

"Should be fine," she nodded. She was still standing, which was saying something. "Okay, you need help or-?"

"I got it," he muttered, scowling at her. "You're the one with bruises on every bone."

"Yeah," she sighed, stepping back so he could get down from the bed.

He slid off carefully, but the pain was just that deep ache. If he didn't think about it, then it didn't exist. He could shut that part off until the pain was useful.

"You do look pretty good," she said cautiously, reaching out to curl her fingers at his non-injured arm. She rubbed her hand up and down his bicep, a strange sensation, while she studied him as if for deficiencies. "What's our next move here?"

"We have the pixel," he murmured, moving slowly as he reached under the bed for their bags. He checked to be sure and her gun and knives were still inside, and yes, the pixel. He shrugged the bag onto his shoulders using one hand, maneuvering the soft cast through the strap. "And we have her diamonds. And she knows that."

"She'll be looking for us," Kate nodded. She was removing the IV line from her elbow, methodically, placing the pink band-aid against the puncture mark. She left the end of the line closed and let it dangle from the pole. "So we show our faces in a place she'll have friends, and we wait for her to come to us."

"The doc who set my hand warned me against the neighborhood behind the Save market."

"Then sounds like we're headed to the market," she said, lifting an eyebrow. "If we can walk."

He chuckled softly and drew his bad arm around her shoulders, hooking at her neck to tug her closer. She came into him easily, but he felt her sigh when her face pressed against him. "You hurt that much?"

"Yeah," she murmured. "But I'll survive."

"I'm sorry," he whispered, brushing his lips to her forehead, skimming the cut just above her eyebrow. "I want more for you, better for you. But at the same time, I want you here."

"This is where I want to be," she told him, lifting her head from his shoulder. Her eyes weren't even fierce, like she had no reason to feel the need to convince him, and for that he was grateful. She was only settled. "With you. Doing this. Righting the whole world."

The corner of his lip twitched. "Yeah. So come on, pick up your feet. We're going to have to slip out the back for that world-righting."

"Yes, sir," she smirked, swatting his ass. He huffed but she was already tangling her fingers in the strap of the backpack and tugging him after her.

Like he wouldn't follow.

* * *

They walked the blocks in a long, looping circle around the demolition site. When they had come to their closest contact point with that warehouse - it was only blocks away - an idea came to her.

"Castle?"

"Yeah." He sounded clear-headed, with it, despite whatever pain must be throbbing through his hand. His poor broken hand was drawn up in a claw the way the doctor had splinted his middle and index finger, while the pinky and thumbs were sticking out. Bizarre.

"What's the plan with the pixel?" she said then. "Because... my guess is this is proprietary tech, an advantage over our enemy, all that. So-"

"Yeah," he agreed. "We don't want it in enemy hands."

"But it's not the worst thing in the world if it is?"

"It's not great," he said, emphasizing it with a drawl. "It's a cloaking device. This is potentially - I mean, you made me watch that damn tv show, Nebula 9. What do you think its potential-"

"Oh," she murmured. "Okay. In - um - space. That's weird to think of for real life."

"Except spy drones, spy satellites, both manned and unmanned vehicles. If Reagan's Star Wars program had ever manifested."

She shuddered. "You're right. I wasn't thinking about that."

"So, yeah, it could be dangerous. The potential is just too great. And honestly, I don't love that the US has it while others don't, though I'm pretty sure this will get passed around to allies. Or stolen by the Israelis. Just, damn, not on my watch, right?"

"We should destroy it."

"We... what?"

"Right now," she told him, making him halt behind a boarded up auto mechanic's shop. Despite the boards, it was definitely doing business, busy and noisy and teeming with people, but the back lift gates of the garage were down, not up, offering them some privacy. She shuffled him back towards the shadows between the delivery hangar and the drive that connected to the main street. "Destroy it. Break it. Irretrievable destruction, Castle, so that no matter what - she doesn't get this pixel. She doesn't get the technology. She _has_ no plan."

Castle pulled the bag around to his front and unzipped it with his good hand. She had to hold the bottom of the zipper to help, and he sighed, rolling his eyes at himself. He pulled out the pixel and it flashed in the sun.

It was an octagon, smooth on one side like a solar cell and rough on the back with open ports that presumably allowed it to connect with other pixels. Castle had said that when the pixels formed a shield or cloak over a tank, the tank disappeared from radar.

Of course, a visual inspection of the horizon was going to reveal tanks lumbering closer, but the end result wasn't to camouflage a tank.

He was right. Spy drones, satellites, future vehicles underwater or in _space_ where a visual inspection was impossible or at least severely limited.

Castle hefted it in his palm and then nodded. "Alright, destruction it is. Were you thinking taking it back to the demolition site, letting the blow it to smithereens?"

"Not specifically," she chuckled. "You just like blowing shit up, baby. I think it'd be hard to sneak it in, harder still to confirm its destruction. Can we shoot at this, you think?"

"Not - I don't know that opening fire right now is a hot idea."

"Can you - bare-hand it?" she asked. And then smacked her forehead and sighed. "Never mind. One-handed, stupid question."

"No, but - the knives?"

She lifted her head, meeting his eyes. Thoughts, plans, half-formed and unspoken sentences came and went between them. He nodded and handed her the pixel, dropped the bag to his feet to rifle through its contents. He extracted the whole sheath and clamped it between his arm and chest, then used his good hand to withdraw the most wicked looking blade.

"Those are my good knives," she sighed.

He chuckled at her. "Put it on the ground. I'll see what damage I can do."

She placed the pixel on the rutted pavement, stepped back to give him room. He crouched down over the shiny little cell and made a few test strokes, experimenting with thrust and range and aim.

"Just do it already," she muttered. But she didn't roll her eyes - she'd learned that lesson. Head was killing her.

"Here we go," he said under his breath.

His aim was true and the blade struck the surface of the pixel and cracked the shiny facade. He stabbed again and glass chipped off, making Castle jerk back.

"Did it get you?" she husked, grabbing his elbow.

"No, it - close though. Damn. This thing is pretty fucking hard. What are we going to do?"

She had her weapon holstered at her back and she reached under her shirt and pulled it out. "Have to. Set it up for me?"

"Damn, baby," he muttered, but he didn't disagree.

Castle cradled his injured hand to his chest and jogged down the alley with the pixel, placing it atop a row of limp plastic garbage cans, using the groove of the handle in the lid to prop it up. When he had come back to her side, she sighted down the barrel and controlled her breathing.

"You got this," he murmured.

She slowly squeezed the trigger.

The pixel cracked and jumped, the trash can lid blew off, but she wasn't sure she had actually gotten the damn thing.

"Let me check. Cover me-"

"I got you," she said, pointing her gun at the ground and checking the entrance and exit of the service alley. The mechanic's garage was open for business but the car up on hydraulics was having loud and impressive repairs done to its undercarriage - and that might have masked the sound.

"Hot damn, sweetheart. You got it." Castle waved a piece of the pixel in the air, and then as she watched, dropped it to the dust and ground it with the heel of his combat boot.

She picked up the backpack and hustled towards him, ready to get out of here.


	14. Chapter 14

**Close Encounters 30**

* * *

Castle had kept a fragment of the pixel, certain Salome would fight tooth and nail for the thing without proof of its demolition. And he was glad he had, because the moment they showed their faces in the poorest section of the barrio, word spread like wildfire. No sooner had he and his wife stepped into one of those hole in the wall restaurants than a scraggly kid of about eight was darting back out to no doubt let the woman know.

He and Beckett sat down at a table against the wall where they both had line of sight to the door and the back kitchens, but they never even got to order.

Salome came in through the front like she owned the place, and patrons got scarce while the waitress thunked down three beers. Maybe they had all seen this coming. Maybe this had been fated long ago.

"You're both worse than fools for showing up here," Salome spat at them, but she swiped two of the bottles and sat at an empty table parallel to theirs. "So, what now?" She drank like she was self-medicating, and she probably was. "What's the next play?"

"Since my wife took your payday?" Castle said, smirking.

"Fuck off," Lo muttered. She turned to Beckett and waved a hand at the tables between them. "You letting your husband speak for you?"

"I'm not much for words," she answered. And then said nothing more.

He grinned, flicked an appreciative look at his wife for that before focusing on Salome. "Alright, Lo, here's the deal. We have your promised payout from the Agency-"

"Will you fucking keep it _down_?" Salome hissed, jerking forward. "This is cartel territory. Do not-"

"Don't you think they all know what we are?" Castle said incredulously. "Do you think they haven't figured you out already?"

"Alfonso hasn't," she said through gritted teeth. "And I want to fucking keep it that way."

"No point," he said roughly. "You're leaving. That's the deal. Agency wants you _out_ of here. Don't care where. Just not here."

"No. Do not blow my cover - my _life_."

"Your cover has _been_ blown," he said. "We're leaving. No arguments. Or you don't get the diamonds, you don't get shit. And while my wife might protest, I will have no fucking qualms about putting you down like the dog you are."

He ignored Beckett's sharp look his way, but she thankfully didn't interrupt. She knew better now than to mess with his careful orchestrations.

Honestly, he wasn't sure he was lying to Lo; he wasn't sure this was a game anymore. This woman had information no one outside New York City was supposed to have, information about his _son_ , and he could not let that stand.

"You're giving me no choice," Salome hissed, half-standing.

Castle pulled his gun before she could even complete her draw, saw to his relief that Beckett had palmed a knife. But his wife's eyes were darting around the restaurant, which told him there were at least three, maybe four other gunmen who had drawn on them. Including that fucking eight year old who had been posted as lookout.

Damn it.

But Salome put her own weapon on the table, a snub little .22 with a mother of pearl handle, a favorite of hers he remembered from ten years ago. She sat back down and took a long pull of her beer, wiped the back of her mouth and closed her eyes like she had nothing at all on her mind.

Or too much.

"We destroyed the pixel," Beckett said then. "So there's nothing to trade for, no move you can make, no last minute deal. This is it."

Castle couldn't pull out the remnant with both hands on his weapon, but Salome didn't ask for it. She just slumped forward and put her head in her hand, scraping her hair back with a terrible bleak nothing in her eyes.

"As alluring as you are," Kate said quietly, "I won't stop him from pulling the trigger. I know you're used to getting your way, but you're done. Pretty won't win you favors any more. It's time to give it up."

"This isn't a _cover_ for me, you bitch. This is my life you've ruined. This is-"

"And when you brought _my_ life into it, this became a new animal." Beckett leaned forward, her face still mottled with bruises and abrasions, her eyes so dark they were black. "This is no longer fun for me, Salome. And when we're not having fun, something needs to be done."

He actually thought Salome was afraid of her. Castle himself was having trouble remembering it was all an act.

Wasn't it?

"We take you across the border," he said quietly. "Use the harbor, get a boat, and put in at Panama City-"

"Cartel," she snapped. "Never make it."

"The cartel runs _all_ of Panama City?" he scoffed.

"Most."

"Then you should be at home there, just as you are here," Kate spoke up. "No more obstacles. Are you coming with us, or do I put a knife in the skinny boy with the gun pointed at my husband?"

Salome's face went white, but she tried her bluster for another second or so.

Castle, however, was done. "On your feet. We've already been here too long. Becks, with me. Get her up-"

"I can get my _self_ up," Salome hissed, but she did at least struggle to stand. Making something of a production of it, since they had both seen her walk with confidence and surety into the restaurant. She grabbed her beer as Beckett backed out from between the tables, her knife ready in her fingers.

Castle put the beer back on the table and pushed Salome forward, and the three of them made it back out to the street. Already, dark clouds had formed up against the horizon like sentinels, and Castle was not looking forward to finding a damn boat in this weather.

Plus, he was fairly certain Salome was only playing for time. But what her endgame was here, he just didn't know.

This would be so much easier if he could just kill the woman and get it over with.

* * *

Standing at the corner outside the Save market, Beckett could see every car that slowed down to inspect them, and while most were simple appreciation with a healthy amount of sexual calculation, the looks they garnered weren't malignant.

Two gorgeous women in close proximity, that was all - though of course, one of those was trussed with a ziptie and held by a leash.

And then it was Castle slowing down for a second look, driving a beat-up truck, whistling at them as he idled at the corner. She flashed him her middle finger and opened the door, unhappy about the accommodations. It was one long bench seat in a single cab.

"Where's Lo supposed to sit?" she hissed at him. She glanced behind her to be sure she still had a firm hold of the woman's bound hands, and she did, the leash taut between them. Lo looked only extremely bored. It was a facade, and Kate knew that, but what the woman was actually thinking she had no idea.

"You sit between us - don't want her fucking with me while I drive. Keep a grip on her so that she can't get the door open."

"Damn it, Castle," she sighed.

"This was all I could get, Becks. Apparently the barrio is too poor for cars up to your standards. Now fucking crawl in."

She did, still pissed, but she yanked on the lead and dragged Salome in after her. "Sit. Shut the door."

Lo did as she was bid, a little sneaking look. "You really know your way around the dominatrix routine, don't you, you skinny bitch?"

"Put your ass in the seat," she muttered.

"She really _does_ ," Castle answered heartily. Beckett elbowed him but he only chuckled, putting the rusted red truck into first gear. He liked this a little too much, the bastard. Though he always did. He complained and worried over her being in the field, but he loved it just as much as she did - or more.

The chassis shook when Castle shifted, and he had to put on the clutch and pop it forward, the truck shuddering as it finally went into first. They rode in silence through the streets of the barrio, each one keeping watch in a different way. Beckett mostly had her eye on Salome because she trusted Castle to have their escape covered, but Lo - she was watching the streets, and not particularly concerned with Kate.

Which was telling. Beckett wondered what exactly it was saying, but she couldn't get her figured out. Salome had run straight into the cartel's warm and beating heart the second she'd had the chance, but now that they were traveling on the open road, painfully obvious, Lo looked like she wanted to be anywhere else.

Alfonso was her protector right now, but Salome didn't _do_ protectors; she had said as much to Beckett. And her timeline was littered with men she'd used at the very same time, Alfonso being one of them, so the idea that she was looking to someone else inside the barrio for protection seemed wrong.

But why else had she run here?

There were too many unanswered questions for Beckett's liking. The name Ilda kept circling in her brain as well, and she didn't like the places it led, or what it meant for their botched extraction. She did see, however, the points where the Director had purposefully set them up, withholding information and orchestrating things to his liking just to shake loose the damn pixel.

At least that was destroyed. That kind of technology they should have tagged and inventoried, brought out of Colombia and back to the Office for the team to study and analyze - who had gotten their hands on it, how accurate was it, could it be traced to manufacturer and research team and finally, back to the thief? But Beckett had wanted the damn thing destroyed, unattainable.

Out of the Director's reach.

She didn't know _why_ that thought had popped in her head. Only that she didn't fully trust the man or his conniving secretary/lover/partner. He'd had a decades-long friendship with John Black, and despite his renouncement, Kate couldn't get past it. When Marjorie had insisted on seeing James at the DC headquarters, they had brought him in because it was one of the safest buildings in the country. But if she had been using it as a convenient way to wave information under the nose of a mole, a traitor, if she had used Kate's _son_ to ferret out a damn leak-

Castle's hand came to her knee and squeezed. She took a breath and tried to come down from her smoldering anger. Salome was pressed against her right side and smirking like she knew things, and Castle was doing his best to keep Kate grounded and positive and with him, and she really had to be fucking with him.

Not spiraling off on tangents about things she didn't even know. She was speculating.

"Alright," Castle said quietly. "We're getting back on the highway and heading towards town. We'll split off and head west for the water, and then we'll dump the truck and go on foot along the marina. She won't risk diving out of the truck on the interstate, but watch her when I pull off."

"I got it," she said, trying to keep her tone even. Steady. "I got this."

"I know you do." His fingers squeezed at her knee.

"I'm not tired," she promised softly. "I've got my second wind. I can make it."

"I trust you." He nodded, his eyes on the road, but she could feel his meaning in those words. Not _I believe you_ , but _I trust you_. Because even if he didn't believe she was up to full speed, even if she was exhausted and feeling it, she was going to get the job done; she was going to back up her partner.

He knew that. He trusted that. All she could ask for.

Beside her, Salome shifted and her body pressed full against Kate's, overheated skin in the small cab of the truck.

Kate adjusted her grip on the zip ties and gave the woman a small inspecting glance.

Salome was the same, eyes forward and teeth gritted, but her face was washed in exhaustion, her hair hanging in a thick, dull wave from her head. The wound was bleeding again. She looked - on the edge.

That was what it was.

She looked desperate.

And Kate didn't like not knowing why.

* * *

It was like playing Pac-Man.

He hadn't actually played the video arcade game as a child - of course not - but about eight weeks into his convalescence at her father's cabin, she had pulled out her old Super Nintendo and hooked it up to the television. They had played Video Arcade and Mario Brothers 3 until they had wound up wrestling on the floor for the player one controller. What he remembered of that time was how very badly she had wanted to keep him from overdoing it (she'd had no idea about the regimen back then, and he hadn't the understanding of just how different his healing process was).

But not just her desperation. He remembered Pac-Man. He had really loved Pac-Man.

Their drive through the outskirts of Cartagena, Colombia, was a lot of like those endless hours of Pac-Man. He was good at that game, and she'd had hours of experience playing it in the arcades, and so they had always battled for the top slots on the leader's scoreboard. She was crap at Galaga, and he had loved that one too (he would have to get a console for James, they could all play), but Pac-Man had been the easiest one for them to get caught up in.

He was dodging ghosts as he drove through the streets, making random left turns or abrupt rights, going down blind alleys only to have to turn around and go back. The police were out this morning, which meant their actions hadn't gone unnoticed, and the drive was spent in tense silence.

He sucked in a breath and made a casual turn into a parking garage, idled the truck in the dark interior until the police car had gone on by.

"We're clear," Kate murmured.

He put the truck back into first and exited out through the entrance, checking both ways before heading back down the one-way street. He needed to get off this road and find something a little more back alley.

He couldn't spare a glance for Beckett, though his thoughts kept coming back to her, to her and Salome in the seat beside him, uncharitable and distrustful of that woman being in such close proximity to his wife. But Kate was giving him little traffic warnings in his ear, _police car five o'clock,_ and so he knew she was with him even if he couldn't look.

Lo was a problem.

That was the thought he kept coming back to. As he wound his way north and west, snaking between buildings where no car should actually go - let alone a wide-bodied truck, Castle dwelled on the problem of his former asset.

She knew things. She knew too much.

"Lo's passed out, I think," Kate said quietly. "Bleeding again."

Castle nodded, but he didn't look, too focused on studying the light-washed streets, the jaywalking natives, the idiot tourists who stepped out into traffic.

"Castle? I think we need to talk."

His heart flipped, but he kept his grip on the wheel. "Yeah." She was fine; she didn't mean herself. She meant the Director. "About the flow of information."

She made an assenting noise and then said nothing at all, which was Beckett's style, and so he let the silence brew between them for a moment, and then he said it. What they were apparently both thinking.

"He did this," Castle sighed. "To prove a point or to make me see her as an enemy."

"As an enemy?" Kate said harshly. "Why?"

"He knows our family is off-limits. He has consistently refused to assign you a covert name-"

"That's his fault?" she murmured. "I don't have a code name because he won't assign me one? I hadn't realized it was above your pay grade."

"I gave you one unofficially-"

"Becks," she said, rolling her eyes.

"I spell it with an 'x' on official Office documents, if that helps?"

She snorted.

"Anyway, the Director was the one who had to okay your hiring. And as such, he keeps you listed as a consultant, an agent, and an analyst, but calls you a covert agent to our faces."

"I... didn't know that. Am I not an agent?" Her voice sounded tight. Small.

Fuck, he hadn't thought about her _pride_. About what that might mean. "You are an agent, otherwise you wouldn't be sent out here with me. But it's the Director playing fucking politics by not classifying you as covert. Fucking with me, with both of us, for these power games."

"But he told Lo about us. Or he told someone to tell Lo. Or he - I don't know - through Marjorie, set this up so that certain people would find out."

"I think so," he admitted. "He had us parade our son through the damn central office because he's killing two birds with one stone. Finding out the source of the leak. And giving me ammunition and probable cause to-"

He swallowed.

Kate nudged his side. "To?"

Shit. "To execute her."

"Hell," she rasped. Her head bowed forward.

"I won't do that, Kate," he said quietly. Even though he _wanted_ to. He did and didn't, and there were too many feelings tangled up in both options for him to ever pull the trigger. Feelings meant he couldn't trust the _why_ of killing Salome, feelings made him partial and biased and a murderer rather than a simple executioner. Feelings put him on the wrong side of the law, if not technically then morally.

"I know you won't," she said then. "I'm - having trouble with this."

"With... what?"

"Not doing it. Killing her."

Oh. Well. His uncompromising-ethics wife was having trouble? "At least I know you're human."

She huffed and skimmed her fingers over his thigh.

He checked his side view mirror and cursed, casually put on his left turn signal. The cop in his rear didn't alter his speed, but that was the third police car in the space of a few blocks. Castle turned against traffic and put a little distance between them, turned left again to go the wrong direction for a few yards before he would allow himself to head west for the marina once more.

"But you think it was him," Kate resumed. "That he got Marjorie to have us bring certain information to the attention of whomever inside the Agency was leaking to her. Or to the cartel, wherever the information flows. And then..."

"And then I'd see how dangerous she really is. What games she's playing with this kind of information, just _how_ deadly and how pervasive her access is. And I'd end it - do the Director a favor."

"I really don't like this," she sighed.

"Me either. But I think we have to worry about getting out of here first. Alive. I don't care if the cartel does know, so long as we get her out of here. Keep her from doing more fucking damage."

"The pixel just - doesn't make sense," Kate muttered.

"Baby, I know you're a detective at heart. But there are some things we just won't know. And this is one of them. Whatever her motives, she did it. She had it. We destroyed it and it's no longer a piece in the game. I want to fucking clear the board of you and me, and _then_ we can speculate all you like."

"I know," she sighed. Her fingers scratched at his thigh. "How's the hand?"

"Hurts like a bitch. How's your face?"

"Probably killing you more than it is me."

He smiled. She patted his leg. They were okay. No matter what crazy games the Director was playing; he had her back and she had his.

Castle turned the truck west again and checked the horizon. Already he could see the flat line of the ocean where it met the sky, and his hope solidified, became tangible.

They were going to make it.


	15. Chapter 15

**Close Encounters 30**

* * *

 _You're a detective at heart._

Kate Beckett couldn't deny it. She was a detective, not a CIA agent. And, apparently, she didn't have official covert agent status either. Which was news to her, which twisted something dark in her psyche that she didn't want to look at too closely.

 _Not good enough._

And there it came up anyway, bubbled up like poison, and she sighed and shoved it back down again because this wasn't the time or place. Castle was going to have to park soon so that they could walk to the marina, and Salome was unconscious and sinking into Kate's side, her cheek on Kate's shoulder, and she didn't have time to worry about whether she was good enough or not.

She was good enough. She was enough.

She was a detective at heart, but she could and had made the hard choices that every agent was faced with. She could pull the trigger if it was necessary.

Beckett did not doubt herself, and most importantly, Castle didn't either.

"Think I'll park here," he murmured. A grocery store lot beside a revitalized vintage theatre. The marina was maybe five blocks away.

Beckett checked his six, gave him the all-clear field sign. Castle chuckled, and she knew he was thinking about their son, and it made her smile too, even though smiling hurt her face. Castle nudged the truck onto the lot and found a parking space beside another, larger truck which would shield them from the road.

"I'll get out and come around," he told her quietly.

"Thanks," she murmured, bracing herself when Castle moved away. Salome was heavy, that deep unconsciousness that spoke of serious injury, and Kate touched the woman's knee, tried to find the bandage under the black yoga pants Lo had changed into somewhere along the way.

The passenger door opened and Salome startled, flinging herself forward with an aborted shout on her lips. Beckett caught the woman by the upper arm, Castle had her by the uninjured leg, and he hauled her down the bench seat towards him. He didn't even give the woman a chance to orient.

"Time to go," he said crisply. Beckett pushed from her end and Salome groaned, but this time Kate didn't think it was for show. This time she really thought Salome was struggling.

Didn't change anything. They _had_ to leave Cartagena.

Beckett nudged her foot into Salome's backside and Castle caught the woman as she fell out of the cab. He propped her up, a hand on the leash they'd attached to the zipties, but now Salome couldn't even summon up the energy to be sexy angry. She was only - reduced.

Beckett crawled out after Salome, got no helping hand to the ground from her husband - which she was grateful for, the fact that he was paying attention, that keeping them both safe meant not offering her pointless chivalry. She liked that Castle knew when to pick his moments.

She slammed shut the cab door and they began to make their way through the parking lot, Salome between her and Castle, having to help her. With every step, it seemed like Lo's leg might give way, but an hour ago, Beckett had been impressed with how nonchalantly the woman had strolled through the front door of the restaurant.

Was it a ploy?

Better question - _which parts_ were the ploy, and which were the truth?

Ilda, the pixel, the money, the demolition, the gunshot wound - all of it swirled together and made it difficult to find the truth. And while Castle was essentially correct, that it didn't matter right now, Beckett needed to know.

She needed her questions answered so that the choices she made in the future were good choices for her family. It mattered if Salome had a daughter out there or a lover, it mattered if the woman had stolen the pixel for ill will or because she was doing her job - because it affected what they did with Salome in the future.

It mattered what the Director wanted with Lo as well.

They had been betrayed at every turn. They'd made the decision to trust - and they had brought their son into that trust, only to have it betrayed.

Never again. No one else from their professional world would have access to James, would even _see_ James, than their small circle of adults.

She was a detective at heart, but she would have to learn to be a cold covert agent to protect her son. To protect _Castle_ , whose secrets were vital and deep and could ruin their lives.

"I can't do this," Salome groaned. They were standing at the corner; Kate could smell the salt from the ocean.

"You can. You will, " Castle answered.

And so they did.

"Just keep moving," Kate told the woman. She couldn't help it, the compassion bled through. "One foot in front of the other."

* * *

They made for the wind turbine, Castle using it as a guide post to keep them oriented while Kate helped him with Salome. The power management's metal shed was at the base of the turbine, and when they pushed through the high hedges growing around the front entrance, Castle stopped there to get his bearings.

They were within a couple hundred yards of the marina gate at this spot, so Castle adjusted the backpack and glanced over his shoulder. "Alright, end of the line. I've got to procure a boat. You stick here with her, hedges will keep you covered."

Kate narrowed her eyes at him, but there was no other choice. The marina gate would have to be scaled and Salome couldn't do it. He wasn't sure _Kate_ could do it either, but he wasn't going to say that.

"I'll come back when I find a boat, let you both in."

Her jaw worked. "Or scale the fence and let us both in now-"

"And sneak between the slips without Salome fucking it up for us? She doesn't want to leave, Becks. She won't make it easy. Let me find a boat and then take you straight there."

"Fine," she grit out. "But take the knives. Since I have the gun."

He nodded agreement and she handed over her set of blades in their neoprene sheath. It was a matter of a simple velcro strap and then they were attached to his thigh instead of hers. Kate let out a breath and stepped away, nudged Salome against the chainlink fence. A hedge branch caught Lo's hair, but she didn't seem to notice.

Kate shrugged and turned back to him. "We'll be here," she promised. And then gave him a roll of her eyes as she glanced to Salome.

Castle squeezed her finger with his good hand, and then turned his back on them both. He pushed through the hedges and jogged down the access road towards the marina. When he came upon the fence, he surveyed the guard shack with its lone window and the sad-looking, sagging gate. He moved parallel to the fence and kept his plaster-casted hand against his chest. The gate was closed, but not padlocked, and it looked like the guard had to come out of his shack to open it for those who wanted inside.

The main gate was a mile up the road, and better appointed than this one, with a lift gate and two guards, but that was where the slip owners and marina clubhouse members went in and out. This gate, with its sagging fence, was the spot where fishermen and personnel came through.

Best option for them right now, as ragged as they were, but it was a funnel point with high visibility and no cover. Meant he had to fake his way through this one.

He wasn't sure this was going to work, going up on foot, no ID, looking like he did. He didn't even have a plausible cover story, and he didn't have the time to plan one out, make it sound good. He just had to _go._

"Hola? Hola, senor." Castle approached the guard shack holding the base of his elbow, his casted hand raised, working on instinct.

The guard came out, a look of confusion on his face rather than caution, which was a good sign. "Que?"

"Hola, si. Necesito ayuda."

"Ayuda? Con...?"

Castle held his hand aloft, nodded towards the marina. "Mi barco." _My boat._ Fake it till you make it, his mother had said once to him. He hadn't realized until this moment just how much of his mother he still carried around with him. "Necessito ayuda."

"Ah, si, si. Aquí _._ " The guard gestured for him to come forward and Castle did, keeping up a commentary on how he had busted his hand and now he was having trouble getting the key into the lock, trouble finding his ID, trouble with the ropes, whatever came to his mind.

The guard opened the gate for him, and then held it wide, nodding and smiling. Genial, helpful, and he asked Castle where his boat was.

Castle waved down the marina, a far slip, and the guard apologized for not being able to help him with the ropes. The boat was too far; he had to stay at his post.

And just that easily, Castle was inside the marina.

Thank God for Martha Rodgers and the talent she had managed to pass along to him, whatever her failings as a mother. She was enabling him to get back to his own child, and so - alright.

Fine. They were good. Forgiven. Water under the bridge. He needed to invite her for James's birthday; he couldn't forget. He wouldn't forget. She _was_ part of him, more than he'd realized.

With that certainty fixed in him, Castle began walking down the main road. It was paved and there were lamp posts every few hundred yards with flower boxes at their bases. After Castle had ambled past three trawlers and a massive schooner, the guard gate disappeared around a bend in the road and Castle was hidden.

He immediately headed for the chain link fence, testing the sag with a hand, pushing his weight into it. After a few experimental shakes, he found a section that was weak at the bottom, and when he dug his boot into the ground, he could easily pull up the fence with his foot.

No problem. It'd be a squeeze, but he had his entry point for his wife and Salome to come through. Now for a boat.

* * *

She knew Castle would take a while, but she hadn't let her guard down for a second.

That was why she saw Salome's elbow coming.

But her reflexes were too slow. Beckett managed to dodge the blow, and instead of it crushing her windpipe, Salome's elbow glanced off her cheekbone and pointed sharply just below her eye. Still. It hurt like a bitch.

She had already shifted to her back foot and brought up her forearms for defense, and as her head snapped back and Salome came in close, Kate lashed out with her other foot.

Salome gasped, clutched at Kate, but she crumpled immediately, Kate's blow landing perfectly against her wounded knee. Beckett stumbled back to the hedge and pressed her hand to her face, but her cheek throbbed painfully, awakening the ache in her jaw as well.

She checked her waist, but the gun was gone.

 _Fuck._

Beckett snapped upright and launched herself at Salome. The woman had just brought the gun up when Kate slammed into her. Salome grunted and fell back, and Beckett smashed her elbow into Salome's face. Lo howled, but Beckett kept going, shoving up and into Lo's braced hands, making the gun clatter free.

Salome rolled, slamming Kate back against the pavement. Beckett wrapped her legs around Lo's hips and bucked, flipping Salome. Beckett came down hard on the woman's pelvis, hard enough for Lo to gasp, crumpling inward.

Beckett pressed her forearm into Salome's neck, shifted a knee into the woman's gunshot wound to pin her. Salome's face went white; she screamed and thrashed, but her eyes rolled back, and she passed out.

Kate rose, breath ragged in her throat, her body jittery with the dump of adrenaline. She crawled away and found the gun, shoved it back into the holster at her hip, hands fumbling appallingly. She pulled her t-shirt out over the weapon, swiped a hand down her face.

She hissed, stiffening with agony.

Damn, she kept forgetting how much it hurt.

Beckett eased to one side, found a spot below the wind turbine in the shadow of the maintenance shed, and sank down. She could see Salome still passed out on the pavement, one leg splayed over the line of the parking spot for the wind power manager.

Kate tilted her head back and felt the cool breeze on her face, the hint of rain in the air. Sweat poured down her back, between her breasts. The shed blocked the sun's harsh rays, and after a moment, Kate began to come down, no longer shaking.

She stood up again and put a hand to the wall of the turbine, waiting until her heart rate steadied and the dizziness abated. She stayed in the shadows, seeking relief, but she kept her eyes on the prone form of Salome.

Who the fuck was Ilda, to make Lo so damn desperate?

She heard Castle's low whistle and she stepped out from the shadows to greet him. He came through the hedge and stopped abruptly.

"What happened here?"

Beckett shook her head. "Made a move for the gun. Had to take her down."

He tilted his head, eyes studying her. "Well, I found a boat. And a place to go through at the fence." His hand lifted and touched very lightly at her cheekbone. "I'll carry her over my shoulder, love."

Kate nodded, very slightly, and his thumb brushed in along her cheek. It hurt but he was regarding her with such pride that she barely felt it.

"Let's go, Castle."

* * *

They had gone through the fence and ranged all the way down to the concrete dock when a silver Escalade flashed through the gate.

Oh, hell. _Here they come._

Castle pushed Beckett to go faster ahead of him, giving up on protecting their flank. "We need to move, Becks." His wife was somewhat unsteady on her feet, no doubt that blow to her cheek hadn't helped her concussion, but she was hustling now, throwing a fast glance behind them.

They ran down to the end of the dock, Lo deadweight over his shoulder. The boat he had picked out was a simple trawler, but it was something of a jump from the dock to the boat's deck, and the silver Escalade was screaming into the parking lot just above the marina's slips.

"Fuck," he cursed softly. "Baby, I need you to jump. Jump onto the boat and let me hand her up to you."

His wife scrambled over the metal spray railing and grabbed one of the ropes, dragged the trawler in as close as it would go to the side of the slip.

"Smart girl," he murmured, gripping Salome with his good hand at her thigh and putting his feet to the edge of the dock.

The Escalade had parked. Men were getting out, orders shouted. They hadn't yet spotted them, but they obviously knew Salome was here somewhere.

He hadn't thought to check for a tracking device. Fucking hell, it had never entered his head that Salome would think _him_ the worse of two evils.

"Becks," he clipped.

"Just heave," she snapped back. She was reaching out for Salome, and she got a fist in the woman's shirt.

Castle heaved, but it wasn't like tossing an army duffle, it was more like chucking a dead body.

Salome's shoulder hit the railing and her legs spilled over the side, but Beckett had a grip in the woman's shirt and grabbed at the black yoga pants. The waistband stretched, Salome's body tipped, but Castle made a running leap and jumped onto the boat's deck to help.

Once there, he grabbed Salome by the thigh, hauled her up and onto the deck. Beckett fell back on an elbow, but Salome's tumble to the deck had roused her. She was trying to struggle upright when a shout sounded from the parking lot.

They'd been spotted.

"Get rid of the ropes, cast off," Castle shouted. "I've got to start the engines." He dashed down the deck to the wheelhouse, ran for the main board. He had to hotwire it, basically, but the engines started in a matter of seconds. He had a sharp learning curve to input coordinates into the navigational computer, but after a too-long moment, the boat began to chug away from the slip. He locked in the rudder so the boat wouldn't turn, but head straight out, and then he opened the throttle.

When Castle ran back out, Kate was still working on casting off. He unsheathed the biggest knife and hacked at the keel rope on his side of the boat, cutting it clean through even as Beckett tossed back the last one. The boat surged and came away from the slip and now armed men in ties and dress shirts were pouring down the side of the parking lot and onto the marina's docking planks like a fucking movie.

Guns were aimed.

"Becks!"

She dropped to the deck at just the right moment, gunfire spraying the forward bow. "Portside," she yelled back at him. "Castle, port-"

He spun and found two guys already on the dock, coming up at their rear, poised to jump. He had the knife in his hand and he threw quickly, the blade finding its mark in the first man's chest. The gunman behind him began shooting out of panic or stupidity, but the first man dying was in the way and the steel sides of the trawler made the bullets ricochet.

Castle hunched down and ran towards the bow where Kate was returning fire.

"It's Alfonso," she yelled grimly, squeezing off another shot. She flashed him a fast look as he approached, but her face went pale. "Castle. Where's Lo?"

"I - you-" He spun on his haunches just in time to see Salome leap over the side of the trawler.

He half rose, horror sinking through his guts as he watched Salome hit the far edge of the dock and slam into the water.

"Fuck," Kate cursed. "Fuck. _Castle._ "

Salome surfaced, flung a desperate arm towards the piling, dragging herself in.

"Shoot her," he croaked. "Beckett. Shoot. Her." A man reached down to help Lo, and Beckett aimed, shot him; the cartel enforcer splashed into the bay.

Salome hung on, got a leg up-

"Kate-"

" _Castle_ -"

"Shoot, Beckett. Fuck." He moved to grab the gun, but in that instant, she pulled the trigger.

He watched as blood bloomed violently across Salome's upper back. Lo screamed, a vicious sound, and her body seemed to slide down the piling and then sink below the surface.

She was gone.


	16. Final Chapter

**Close Encounters 30**

* * *

"Oh, God, I killed her."

"Get the _fuck down_ ," he hissed, shoving hard on her. Beckett sprawled to the deck, shock icy in her blood. She felt her cheek hit the side of the rail and she groaned, but Castle was already pushing off the wood and running for the pilothouse.

Bullets peppered the sides of the boat but they were already too far out for a decent hit. She stayed low, not because of the gunfire so much as the terrible ache that pounded through her head.

She heard the engines chugging, the turbulence of water parted by the trawler's side, but she was slow to orient.

"Beckett. Come on, up. Now."

She groaned as she came to her knees, ducked when a bullet whizzed horribly off its mark. Castle ignored it, they were now too far out, and he hauled her towards the protection of the wheelhouse.

When they were both inside, she slumped down to a bench against one wall and put her head in her hands, breathing hard.

"You did what you had to do. What I ordered-"

"Don't fucking give me excuses."

He didn't say another word, simply moved off. Beckett swallowed back the bile that rose in her throat and let out a long breath. She felt the boat turning as Castle steered them out towards the open sea, and then he was settling beside her.

She lifted her head. "She knew about our son."

"You didn't shoot her because of that."

"I think I did."

Castle was silent.

Beckett tilted her head back and closed her eyes.

Castle's hand came to her inside thigh and laid there, heavy, sure. She blinked back tears and dropped her hand over his, breathing roughly through the pain in her bones.

"I love you," he said, his voice pitched just low enough to be heard over the whine of the engines. "And I know that doesn't make it better, but-"

"Helps," she whispered, her lashes blurring.

Castle lifted his hand out from under hers but he slid his arm around her shoulders and brought her in against his side. She laid her uninjured cheek to the side of his neck and let him take her weight.

* * *

They hugged the coastline southward, being careful to stay in international waters, Castle piloting the boat while Beckett slept. He would wake her every hour to be sure the concussion hadn't caused more damage, but she roused every time and knew her name and what they'd done.

They had some lead time before the Colombian Coast Guard was brought in on a cartel slaying, but Castle wasn't going to put in at a Colombian harbor. Too risky. He aimed them for Panama and kept his wake low, his speed reduced, making sure they looked like a regular pleasure trawler.

He had just crossed them from the Colombian coastline to Panamanian when Beckett didn't wake for him.

"Kate," he said, breathing deeply to keep calm. "Kate."

Nothing.

He brushed the hair back from her face and took her pulse at her neck, but it was steady. Her eye had swollen up again - Salome had hit her in the same spot Kate had slammed into the steering wheel - and her jaw was still mottled purple and blue.

"Kate."

She didn't stir.

He scrambled to his feet.

Castle steered the boat in to shore and wound up in Armila, Panama, according to the GPS. He brought them in at a fisherman's dock, made the boat fast. He lifted his wife into his arms and carried her out of the pilothouse and into the blazing sunlight, his broken hand beginning to itch and burn with healing bones.

He ignored the discomfort, shrugged his shoulders inside the straps of the backpack, and carried Kate over the side and onto the dock, walking quickly to avoid drawing attention. The little inlet was sheltered here, and palm trees hugged the curve of the shoreline, but the fishermen were out and about and would come around soon enough, curious about his trawler.

It was something of a hike before he got to the first manmade structure, a shack up on stilts, but it looked deserted for the day. No livestock running around underneath either, which made Castle think it was a port in a storm and nothing more. He surveyed the open-air hut for a few moments more, circling below as he inspected the place, but he was convinced they were safe.

To climb the ladder up onto the main floor, Castle shifted Kate in his arms for a better grip, her head rolling against his shoulder. She moaned, beginning to stir, and he let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"Kate?"

"F-fuck, put me down," she groaned.

He leaned in and set her on her feet, hanging on to her as she swayed backwards. Kate caught the ladder with a shoulder but stayed there, leaning her head against one of the rungs.

"Where are we?"

"Panama. Fishing village."

There was a long silence, the sound of birds and the ocean just beyond.

"I gotta lie down," she said finally.

"I know," he said. "Let me carry you up."

She lifted her head and tilted it back, looking all the way up the ladder. Her throat bobbed. "Okay."

Damn. Not a good sign.

Castle caught the back of her neck very gently and eased her into him. Kate came, her whole body sinking into his, and he brushed his lips at the puffy rise of her cheek.

"Baby, put your legs around me."

She laughed, wilted though it was, and drew an arm around him. "On your back?"

"Yeah." He turned his back to her and she hiked up first one leg and then the other, Castle gripping her thighs to hold her there. When he turned to the ladder again, she was winding her arms around his neck and hooking a hand around her wrist to keep from strangling him.

They were good at piggy-back rides.

Kate nestled her chin down between his shoulder blades and he began to climb the ladder.

* * *

When she woke, it was cool and dark and lovely and her head didn't hurt so much.

"Feel better?"

Castle was beside her, lying down on the floor with her. He had found a blanket and drawn it up over her and she was curiously light. She blinked and let out a long breath. "You been watching me sleep, Castle?"

"Yes."

Oh.

Kate slid an arm out from under the blanket - it smelled like bananas - and touched his lips where they were chapped. She thought his cheeks looked pink. "The cast?"

"I ripped it off a couple hours ago. My hand was throbbing."

"Itching?"

"Yeah."

"Good, that's good," she murmured.

"Enough about me," he said.

Her eyes flared back open. He looked halfway to wrecked, she realized. Worried about her. And that was her fault. She always interrogated him over the last little detail about his special blood, but when it came to herself, she never spoke a word.

"I'm okay," she told him honestly. "It's not what you think."

"I think it's the leftover serum in your blood - whatever it did - that's making you so tired right now."

"Oh." She tried smiling but it only reawakened all that ache, so she stopped. "Okay, it is what you think. But it's not the concussion. It's just my scratched up blood cells."

"It's your immune system," he countered. "And now that it's been activated by all this - trauma - it's leaving more scratches on your blood cells as it works."

Damn, he really knew his stuff. "Yes."

"I don't like this."

"I know you don't." Why she hadn't bothered to tell him. "But what we know is actually a lot. And what Threkeld can do for me is more than you might think."

"No more infusions," he said, but she heard the question in his voice. Because he had been the one to insist on it, on James giving blood.

"We don't know. It's a balancing act, as you've learned. Infusions from James could help, but it could also tip it over. Depends on how much and what's - damaged."

"I don't like not knowing, Kate. You can't do that to me again."

She stayed silent, absorbing his anger, the way it rose up from him. He was deeply aggrieved, and she had not quite realized it would hurt him this much.

"I'm sorry," she said finally. "I don't know why I do that all the time."

"You think you're protecting me, keeping things from me, but you're not."

"I'm not," she admitted. "I can't seem to protect you at all-"

"No, don't. Don't you dare make this about your shit. You have my back - like no one else. You protect me. It is your job, and you have always been fucking _good_ at your job. So don't use that as an excuse."

She swallowed and nodded against the rough edge of the blanket.

"What I'm taking about here is keeping secrets from me."

"I didn't - think of it like a secret."

"But it was. You didn't tell me and you _had_ to have asked others not to tell me."

"I... yes."

"No more of it, Kate."

"No more," she whispered.

"I don't think you mean it."

"I do. I mean it. I just-" She lifted her hand to her cheek and closed her eyelid, the puffy one that wouldn't seem to stay shut. She felt like shit but it wasn't the injuries to her face.

Her heart ached.

"I made a deal with Logan that he'd keep me informed on every damn thing, so you must have cut him out of it too."

"He worries too much and he has his own family-"

"Don't."

She closed her mouth and curled her arm up into her chest. He came after her, his fingers around her wrist, making her open back up to him. And then he was dragging her over his body so that she was sprawled on top of him and her head was beginning to throb again in time to her heartbeat.

"You are not allowed to keep things from me about the regimen. About your health." He cupped the back of her head but his fingers were rough in her tangled hair. "You cannot keep doing this to me. I need to know these things, even if it's fucking _nothing._ I can't get surprised like this again."

She nodded mindlessly against the slope of his chest and his arms tightened. She took in a shaky breath. "I'm not pregnant," she rushed out.

"What the fuck."

"I had a - weird dizzy spell and then I was starving, I was - wanted to eat everything in sight even though I knew you were in with her trying to interrogate her and I just - fucking ate a banana and tortilla with cheese instead-"

"Oh, God," he laughed. "Kate."

"What."

"You're not pregnant. Okay. Okay. Does that mean we need to do something - find a clinic or morning after pill or are you really not pregnant?"

"Really not," she murmured, closing her eyes. "But you said everything."

He was silent a moment and then he laughed again and his hand gentled against the back of her head. "I did, yes." His kiss was light at her temple. "So you had a thought pop in your head back at the safe house and you shared."

"Yeah."

Castle cleared his throat. "Okay, baby, thank you for telling me."

She pinched his side and he yelped a little, still laughing at her.

"You're gonna be just fine," he said.

"I know I am, you bully," she muttered. "But try convincing _you_ of that."

"I know," he sighed, another kiss against her forehead. "I get worked up about you, love. You're my heart. I need you. But yeah, I'll try to be more responsible in my reactions."

"And listen to me."

"And... listen to you?"

"You make up your mind it's one way and you don't even hear what I say. You heard that my blood cells had damage and you jumped to terrible conclusions, first thing."

"I understand that it's not-"

" _Now_ , you do. Now you understand. Now you can tell me exactly why I'm so tired and my skin is hot. But you know what, Castle? I could've told you that all along. I _did_ tell you. But you wouldn't listen. You heard damage and you jumped to worst case scenarios."

"I'm sorry," he said immediately. And it sounded real, it sounded good.

"I know you're sorry," she sighed. "And so am I. But-"

"But we do it anyway, don't we?"

She nodded, drawing her arm into her chest, fingers caressing over the material of his shirt.

"We need a signal."

"For what?" she sighed.

"For when I'm doing that - jumping to worst case scenarios and not listening. For when - when you're shutting me out and not telling me things."

"A field signal," she said quietly, smiling a little.

"Yeah. That."

"How are you going to know that I'm not telling you things?" She traced a finger along the collar of his shirt. "If I'm not telling you, if I'm keeping secrets, then you'd never know."

"Well, yes, you are a spy, aren't you? Maybe I'll just randomly flash our field sign and see if you need to unburden yourself. Every few weeks-"

She pinched him again. "I don't do it that often."

"Every few months, then." He was grinning; she could hear it in his voice. His palm flattened on her back. "We'll figure it out."

"We will," she agreed.

"Hey, I got an idea. Even better. I could just tie you up in the panic room every couple of weeks, interrogate you. I'm pretty damn good at interrogation."

Kate laughed, but _hell_ it made her a little breathless to think about. "With your shirt off," she told him. She could just feel the spot at his skin where the tattoo started. She rubbed the top edge, the raised part where the ink was thick. "So I can see-"

"The wolf snarling at you?" he said. She could hear the smirk in his voice, but she could barely _care_.

"Yeah. I like it when you scare me a little." Snarling bully of a wolf.

She remembered, quite vividly, those days in Cologne after Paris when he'd gotten the tattoo, how fucking raw and exhausted and aching they both had been. How it had made him rough at all his edges.

And more - she remembered the endless hours of therapy they had done at home, trying to expose the wounds so they could be healed again. How Castle had punished himself for not paying more attention to her by keeping his distance from their son, as if his love for James, his _dream_ of James, had caused the damage done to her by the regimen.

And how she had, in turn, felt so frustrated and demoralized by all the things she couldn't do that she had overdone. How she had wanted to prove him wrong. How she had needed to be good enough to keep up with him, her super husband.

Proving herself.

She had killed Salome.

It wasn't just because Salome had known about James. It was also all the hard work they had done - and were doing - that had been threatened when Salome had made her escape. It wasn't that Kate doubted Castle's love for her, no. Never. But the effort, the sweat and blood and tears they had both poured into their family, to _make_ it a family, to keep it together, to have their son, to provide safety and strength and good character for him - that had been at risk.

Her father, whose home had been attacked in their last go-round; Colin, somewhere out there undercover for them. The boys, working with Kate back home at the office who relied on her discretion. And the guys, Mitchell and Ren, who had tirelessly had their backs and given their support no matter the consequences.

She had killed Salome.

She had killed their asset, shot a woman in the back as she had been fleeing from them.

"It's okay to cry," Castle whispered, and cupped the back of her head to hold her there.

And she did. She couldn't help it. She cried.

* * *

Castle used his satellite phone to call in, and Reynolds offered to send out a team from Panama City to pick them up. After a brief conference with the team leader, who turned out to be a guy Castle had served with in Afghanistan, Castle agreed to the pick up.

He let Beckett sleep while he went back to the fisherman's dock and scuttled the boat. It was easier than he'd thought - bullet holes had nicked the main engine room and the sail winches had evidently been rusted out long ago. He dismantled the equipment first and stacked it in the hut for the locals, filing off the ID numbers (someone should use it, and these people had unintentionally put them up).

He watched the boat sink from shore as the sun set, flexing his newly healed hand to keep the tendons and muscles from stiffening up. The bone would still be weak - he knew from past experience - but he could use it without much trouble so long as he didn't put a lot of exertion or torque into his movements.

Castle eased down to the sand as the boat went slowly, hooking his arms around his drawn up knees.

He had bullied through that last conversation, but the truth was - Kate was terrible about knowing her own body's limits. Knowing _her_ limits, period. Not just physically, but in every way, she pushed harder, went further, demanded more from herself. It was how she was built, it was why she'd taken on the insane chore of loving him. He didn't want her to be any different, but he did want a fucking reliable way of knowing when she might crash so he could head it off at the pass.

That was _his_ job as the man who loved her. As her partner in the field, whether the field was here in Colombia, at the Office, or at home. It was his job to pay some fucking attention.

He thought he _had_. But not enough.

When her immune system was activated, she still had something going on inside her that tried to or _did_ alter her red blood cells. Which meant, yes, that her concussion symptoms were minimized, but it didn't mean the system was complete. That had been the problem with the pregnancy and breastfeeding - her body couldn't finish up all those necessary processes.

So she had been more tired lately and it wasn't just his imagination or his paranoia. She had been more easily worn out, less endurance, but she was Beckett and she had pushed herself anyway. She had been field ready, but most definitely not _this_ field ready. Not a car accident to the face and pistol-whipped and Salome.

She would fucking light him up if she knew he'd thought that of her. And while it was true, she had also disproved it this week, hadn't she?

She had survived this mission because she was Kate Beckett. And he trusted that in a way that no fucking regimen damage could take from them. She would get back to him, she would fight for him, and while it was often at the detriment to herself, she _did_ at least understand that fighting for him meant fighting for herself too.

She understood that it was about _them_ , not him alone. Paris had seared that into both of them. What good was his family if she was gone? He had no family if she was gone. He'd have a bunch of guys who would all be grieving for their center. For her.

And he was sure that she knew that, sure that her instincts kicked in and dragged her back from the edge of no return.

Which was why Threkeld knew anything at all about the damage to her blood. Which was why she had actually sought out their medical team and gotten at least one of them involved on the project. Boyd probably knew about it as well. The both of them were somewhat absent-minded professors, so Logan wouldn't necessarily have to be kept out of the loop, just... never informed in the first place.

So they were making progress. Kate _had_ changed, had made adjustments to her natural tendency to shut down and close off and soak in denial. He wasn't hopeless about this; it wasn't dark night of the soul here.

He just needed to rethink his approach.

Maybe he really would fucking tie her up and edge the truth out of her. She liked it, every now and then, and every now and then was all he needed.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out to read the message.

 _ETA 30 mins. Be ready_

Castle got to his feet on the sand, watched the last of the red light lick the top of the sinking boat. Twilight was at his back, lingering in the trees, coming in along the curved eastern edge of the shoreline.

He turned his back to the disappearing boat and hiked through the underbrush and palm trees for the little hut on stilts.

He flexed his hand again, squeezing the tightness out of it, spreading his fingers flat to keep them from drawing up into a claw. He was ready to get out of here. He should probably have Logan work with him on some therapy exercises; he might need to have the bones broken and set with surgery.

Kate.

Things had changed, but more was going to, more had to be done.

He climbed the ladder with the phone in his hand, settled at the foot of her sleeping form. The blanket had been bunched up at her side and she was curled around it, her cheek to the rough material.

Castle laid a hand on her ankle and tilted the phone towards the last of the light, punching in the number by heart.

Jim answered on the first ring, warmth in his voice.

Castle cleared his throat. "Hey, Papa, we're headed home. Probably be there around midnight, after debrief."

"Really? Wow, that was a fast one. Do you want me to take him over to your place and put him to bed there? Might make it easier on everyone."

"Where are you now?" he asked.

"We're camped out at the cabin. Sasha was howling for the woods the second we got out of the city."

Castle grinned. "You guys stay there. We'll come out and meet you, spend a few days. If you don't mind."

"No, don't mind at all. One of those?"

"Yeah," he admitted, throat tight. "I'm sorry-"

"She there?"

"She's asleep."

"Don't apologize, son. This is not on you, not your _fault_. And she'd be the first to say it."

"Not my fault, but she is my responsibility."

"You just take care of her as she is, Rick. That is your responsibility. Anything else is a little self-aggrandizing, don't you think?"

Castle barked a laugh and bowed his head. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Kate is most definitely her own person."

"Her choice. Always been that way. Hey. You want to talk to James? He's on the back porch with the dog."

"No, no point," he said. "Tell him we're coming home. That's enough."

"It is enough," Jim said quietly. "We'll see you when we see you."

Castle ended the call without saying good-bye, lowered the phone to his lap, his eyes on Kate.

It was peaceful here, pretty. Soon the team would swarm the place and the Humvee would churn the sand and trample the undergrowth, and she'd walk out with him into the headlight-glared darkness.

And then they'd go home.

But this place would always stay with them. The _mission_ would always be part of them, and with that came the refining edge of danger, the fear that sharpened, the unknown that made the faster, better, stronger.

He wouldn't change it for the world.

* * *

 **The End**

 **A/N:** The Close Encounters universe has become such a far-reaching project. I never imagined it would hit 30+ stories, and I am so grateful to you for sticking with it, discovering or rediscovering it, and letting me know how much you love it.

This isn't the last word from the spies, but as of yet, I have no outlines for future stories. Check with the i heart spy castle tumblr (all one word) for news, updates, and M rated material. I'll also be posting there a few AU versions of this universe (Army and Trauma) which grew out of this crazy.

Special Thanks and Massive Love to two people who consistently and constantly made this possible: **jyleafer15** for her cover art, her iheartspycastle tumblr design, and her technical and artistic support; and **cartographical** (Jessie) for her serious, impressive, crazy love for spy. Without her, there would be no spy. At all.


End file.
